Talarico’s Flame Burns Bright for Lib voters, Will it Be Enough in Texas?

**Josh Holmes** (0:00)
Well, it turns out, he's blowing torch.

**Comfortably Smug** (0:01)
This is a video clip of Talarico in the most awkward way, trying to look like he's doing something with a blow torch. It's not the usual approach I imagine he would take to such activities. I mean, a lot of people, if you ask him in Texas, he's been described as a specialist when it comes to blowing things, but I don't know if this meant to blow a torch.

**Josh Holmes** (0:20)
This is a case of mistake in scheduling. This happens from time to time when you're running campaigns and things get chaotic and people want you in different parts of the state, you've got to lock down constituencies, and they heard he was really good at giving torch.

**Michael Duncan** (0:32)
You're telling me he was laying pipe and blowing torch.

**Josh Holmes** (0:34)
Yeah, that's what happened.

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So congratulations.

**John Ashbrook** (1:40)
Thank you.

**Josh Holmes** (1:40)
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**John Ashbrook** (1:49)
This is why you listen to the Ruthless Podcast because nobody else would ask that question.

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The only political podcast worth listening to is the Ruthless Podcast.

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The Ruthless Podcast.

**SPEAKER_12** (2:02)
Fun time Friday.

**Josh Holmes** (2:06)
Welcome back to the Ruthless Friday program. I'm Josh Holmes along with comfortably Smug Michael Duncan and John Ashbrook, left to right across your radio dial. I feel the need to warn you, you the listener and the viewer. This could be a disaster. We have, what I would characterize is a windfall of hilarious things that have been set aside on the cutting room floor for Tuesday and Thursday's episode, because there was real news and real discussion and important stuff to discuss.
But that doesn't mean that the hilarity stops, and so it didn't quite wedge itself into those previous episodes. And we had a pre-show discussion, as we always do, 10, 15 minutes, where we kind of go over the things that we were talking about. And everybody's like, fuck it.
Let's just play clips and laugh and have fun. So you're about to have an awful lot of fun along with us. Now it could be a disaster, right, Swann?

**Comfortably Smug** (3:08)
It's not going to be. This is the purest distillation of Fun Time Friday. This is this full spirit of Fun Time Friday. You're going to have four friends who are going to have a great time. I mean, the content is incredible. The only problem we have with today's episode is there's a million hilarious things to discuss and we're going to do it as fast as possible.

**SPEAKER_14** (3:25)
Yeah.

**Josh Holmes** (3:27)
Yeah, there's no question about that. And we have typically Wolf organizes things well.
And our only direction was disorganize.

**SPEAKER_14** (3:37)
I think you're underselling this a little bit because I do think there were multiple moments this week where each of us at different times were like, this needs to be saved for Friday. Yeah. So this is kind of hand picked.

**Comfortably Smug** (3:52)
Yeah.

**Josh Holmes** (3:52)
Well, I mean, it's good. We have to start with Talarico, right? I mean, the Plantner thing was so good for us for so long. And each and every week, it almost seemed like every three days, there was something it was like.

**Comfortably Smug** (4:03)
Another news conference.

**SPEAKER_7** (4:04)
I got the Nazi. This is another horrible thing I've done.

**Josh Holmes** (4:07)
I've sexually assaulted. You know, I mean, it was just like one after another. And the Talarico thing was kind of operating in a parallel track in a lot of ways. But because of like the socialists taking over, nobody's looking down in Texas to be like, what's that guy up to? Well, it turns out he's blowing torch.