Ken Paxton's Surprisingly Good Interview With Tucker
The Texas AG shines some light on his impeachment ordeal
Yesterday I sat down intending to sort-of pay attention to Tucker Carlson’s 45-minute interview with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Although I knew the basic outline of Paxton’s impeachment — and subsequent acquittal — coming from the Texas State Senate, I had no idea about the dirty little details. The longer I listened to Paxton speak, the crazier the story got. When Paxton talked about about the 2020 election — and specifically mail-in ballots — I knew this was an interview worth writing an article about. I hope you agree!
The first major topic covered by Paxton and Carlson is how the Texas House works in reality: Even though the the body is controlled by Republicans, DEMOCRATS actually decide the leadership. Paxton explains:
Realistically, there’s no reason this behavior is restricted to the Texas House, either. Remember back to Kevin McCarthy’s fight for Speaker of the House. In that particular case, Democrats “held the line” and continued to vote for fellow Democrat Hakeem Jeffries in vote after vote — but at any time they could have shifted their support to some sort of Republican Liz Cheney/Adam Kinzinger-type figure (luckily, both of those particular swamp monsters were gone in 2022). This would have left “Lizinger” needing only a couple Republican votes to claim the Speakership — almost entirely on the back of Democratic votes the new Speaker would be beholden to. (Not that McCarthy has been much better.)
This forms the backdrop of the impeachment charges against Paxton, and explains why a Republican Attorney General can be impeached in Republican state. Ultimately, Paxton believes the Biden administration was behind the effort to remove him from office, as Paxton had won just over 3/4 of his cases against them.
Paxton explains the investigations into his actions had been going on in secret for months before he was ultimately impeached on a weekend — without once being able to mount a defense or really even know what the charges WERE. Paxton was immediately suspended from his (elected) position and denied his salary — a move that certainly seems illegal. (The comptroller told Paxton to sue him.) As if this wasn’t bad enough, Paxton was also hit with a gag order. (Technically, so was the Texas House, but they simply leaked the information to the media, who was free to attack while Paxton couldn’t defend himself.)
To top it all off, Paxton had spent his cash on his campaign so he couldn’t hire lawyers, so during the impeachment he was effectively denied representation, wasn’t getting paid, and couldn’t speak out on his own defense. All perfectly “legal” according to the state of Texas! (And remember, Paxton hadn’t been convicted of anything!)
For a bit, Paxton and Carlson go back and forth making digs at Karl Rove — a favorite pastime of mine, to be sure — and talking about the group “Texans for Lawsuit Reform”, which has opposed Paxton in the past. Ultimately, the pair get around to the fact that Rove has the same stance on the border as Joe Biden. This is where (to me) it gets REALLY interesting. Paxton claims the goal of the “other side” is turning Texas blue, and his job as Attorney General is more difficult when he’s also fighting off the Rove faction from “his side”.
As part of the conversation, Paxton touches on one of my “favorite” issues — you can’t trust elections when you’re littering the cityscape with ‘legal’ ballots with no checks on who’s turning those ballots in:
How many times have you heard me Screaming about this exact thing? If you can’t determine if the ballot at the bottom of the box was legally cast, you can’t trust the results of the elections — and if you can’t trust the results of the elections, you can’t trust ANYTHING.
Later, Paxton makes some observations about states that stopped counting ballots, and how the same shenanigans would have happened in Texas if he hadn’t been proactive about stopping it:
To me, this was the entire point of opening up the mail-in ballot integrity hole! An “unprovable”, “untraceable” method of getting exactly the votes you need, exactly when and where you need them……
And after watching the situation at the border, I believe that ultimately, the move will be to allow illegals to vote — because as Paxton describes, you don’t even need the vote, you just need the ballot. All “unprovable”, but voter fraud nonetheless.
And when Paxton says that he can’t prove voter fraud, he literally means he literally CAN’T prove voter fraud:
And we come full circle, with the “Republican” Speaker of the House telling the Republican Attorney General that the House doesn’t have time to re-authorize Paxton to prosecute voter fraud — so nobody does it at all. I would think that leaving our elections open to thievery would be dangerous to democracy, but what do I know?
Another interesting fact touched on in the interview is that Paxton was looking into suing the covid-19 vaccine makers for lying about possible side effects of the jabs — and that’s when his life really blew up. (Another attempted victim of Big Pharma? How much do they stand to lose if they’re found guilty of fraud, I wonder?)
Paxton wraps up the interview by stating that lawfare works because many judges are more political than they are fair. (A conversation we just had in the comments a few days ago!) But Paxton says that even if he’s punished, he’s is going to continue fighting so he doesn’t leave his kids and grandkids stuck without options. His entire battle could be summed by one of his final thoughts:
“We lose Texas, we lose everything.”
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In Wednesday’s column about the cancelation of Russell Brand, I predicted that TikTok and Rumble weren’t the only outlets to receive letters from the UK government, and (shocker) it turns out that is indeed the case. Here’s the letter to X/Twitter, and the one to Facebook. Also, TikTok responds — and not in a way that I prefer. (It’s cute they’re pretending this is about Brand’s CONTENT, though!)
And finally, a G update: The weather is getting more reasonable, so he’s been slumming it with the staff outside:
Thanks for highlighting and commenting on! Not to be missed. For a darker view of Texas, see the latest American Mind piece by Giles Hoffman. https://americanmind.org/salvo/between-suicide-and-murder-part-two/ Less relatedly, I have new post up on my stack, "The Long Road to Reckoning."
Oops.
I think I have commented so much here, on the best 'stack, that any *on*-topic post of mine would require me to repeat myself.
In any case, thanks again for letting me piggyback, and thanks to the community for putting up with me.