Texas governor DUCKS Trump’s visit to his state as election fears grow

Chris Hayes (0:01)

Tonight, on All In.

Donald Trump (0:04)

I'm asking you to pretend that I'm on the ballot. I'm on the ballot.

Chris Hayes (0:10)

The end of the pretending in Texas. Tonight, 27 days to the midterm, more red flags for Republicans. Then.

Donald Trump (0:22)

There is a lot of cheating in Vote By Mail. Start off by taking a look at California.

Chris Hayes (0:28)

New alarm over a Trump plan to undermine democracy by way of California.

SPEAKER_5 (0:34)

He is telling us out loud, he's not whispering it, he's shouting it, that he is going to attack mail-in voting, and that he is going to specifically, specifically target California.

Chris Hayes (0:47)

And as the USS Lincoln finally returns to San Diego, the growing calls for investigations into what went wrong.

Pete Hegseth (0:55)

Only a reaction the American people and the American media should have is pride.

Chris Hayes (1:01)

But All In starts right now.

Good evening from New York. I'm Chris Hayes. Donald Trump was only back in office for a few months when he and the Republicans devised their big plan to win the midterm elections. It was a simple plan, let Trump take the wheel. Donald Trump, only he can fix it, right? He was going to save the party from the normal midterm blowback by first ordering all the Republican states to gerrymander their house districts. Now, this had never been done before, except for once in Texas under Carl Roeve and George W. Bush, who, well, so the idea was just, if you can control it, there's no law against it, just go put more seats out of reach before the voting even starts. Don't wait for the voters to weigh in, just move them around the board. The vanguard of this movement, the state where Republicans move the fastest to try to seal the most seats was Texas. So that was phase one. The next phase of the big plan was to let Trump come in and pick your candidates. Sure, they're a Republican incumbents, but did they have sufficient personal lawyerly for Trump to endorse them? That was how Ken Paxton became the Republican Senate candidate in Texas. A man with so many corruption issues and so widely despised among people in his own party, that Republicans impeached him as Attorney General. A man so disliked that Trump makes him the butt of jokes in rally speeches ostensibly there to support him.

And so now here we are, Republicans are panicking a bit. They're facing possible election wipeout in Texas of all places. I mean, think about the psychological import of Texas, okay? Texas is the crown jewel of the party, of modern Republicanism. It is the second largest state in the country. It's worth 40 electoral votes, right? So notching that in the red column is like a big part of how you become president as a Republican. It's a state that has not elected a single Democrat for any office statewide in 32 years.

But something different is happening this time around. You're hearing more about it from more and more Texas voters like this one who spoke to MS Now last week.

SPEAKER_7 (3:09)

We're going to vote for James Taylor Rico. Oh, interesting. I'm voting blue because the current Republicans on the slate in Texas are not desirable. I'm not going to vote Republican in this election. Wow.

SPEAKER_4 (3:23)

Is that the first time for you?

SPEAKER_7 (3:27)

I don't know about the first time, probably all ballot, but certainly the first time that it's not a shoe in for the GOP in the red.

Chris Hayes (3:35)

Now, there was a third phase to the big Republican plan, which they are trying to implement now. That's the money bomb phase as billionaires and corporate interests and Republican-aligned super PACs dropped cash on the rigs. Hundreds of millions has been raised from these interests because John Roberts, the Supreme Court, have destroyed any campaign finance reform because Donald Trump is open for business. And you can just give his PAC a ton of money and God knows what you'll get in response, right? Much of the money right now pouring through those super PACs is dedicated to helping Ken Paxton against his Senate opponent, Democrat James Tallarico. And here's the thing, as of now, and again, we'll find out in four weeks, it doesn't look like it's working. In fact, Republicans are pulling so poorly in the state, they may end up losing some of the five new seats they had gerrymandered for themselves, the so-called dummymander. Sure enough, yesterday, Congressman Tom Emmer, who's the House Republican whip, even told reporters there was no way they would win all the seats that they had specifically engineered to win for Donald Trump at his orders across the country, saying, quote, we're not going to win all 13 of those redistricted seats. That's correct. We're not.