Andy Runyan

One of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was "composition"—whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win. And despite polls that showed a Democrat blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story: in some states turnout was merely OK, in other states it was downright amazing, and in no state was it catastrophic. There was a genuine sense of optimism on our team: our people were showing up. So, I asked the smartest data guy I know, does that mean we're going to shock the world? "No," he told me. "We might do better than the polls suggest. But the data is telling us that a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys. Our voters are turning out, but they may not vote for us." Well, that looks prophetic now. Our voters did show up. In Florida, for example, the electorate was 9 points more Republican than Democrat, just a couple points worse than 2024. Undoubtedly there were places we could have done better on turnout. But the main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026. There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what happened and why that is. One of the pollsters I really respect told me that our economic messaging wasn’t sharp enough down the stretch. I’m sure that’s true. But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone. Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were: 1) End the war 2) Focus on cost of living/inflation 3) Put America First 4) Change our relationship to Israel Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats. This is according to a pollster who nailed the results. While many spent Monday attacking Rachel Campos Duffy for calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, it turns out her political advice was sound. (She’s also a great person.) In the next few months, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting. Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I'm open to the idea that we should change enforcement—by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you. The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night. If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest. But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there. I remain hopeful about our country. To the people who are pissed off and want to say, “I told you so”: you’re right, you did tell us so. Take that energy into electing Republicans who share your worldview. To the people who are just pissed at the results, you should be. Let’s take that anger and get back to the work of saving our country.

History was made last night. For months, we were saying that 2026 was the most consequential midterm election of our lifetimes. Unfortunately, we were right. Sometimes history is to be celebrated; other times, it is to be mourned. Always, it must be reckoned with. 2026 was not simply a blue wave; it was a blue tsunami. It was an ass kicking. It was not simply a bad 2006 midterm election. It was a Watergate-level repudiation. What happened, and why? What are the consequences, and where on earth do we go from here? When all the votes were counted, the problem wasn’t turnout. Instead, our voters, Republicans, Libertarians, Independents, showed up and voted, and rejected our candidates, voting Democrat instead. We’ve lost the House. We’ve lost the Senate. When all is said and done, we will have lost eight to 10 Senate seats. We lost in historically red states, like South Carolina and North Carolina, Kansas and Iowa. We lost in purple states, like Michigan, and New Hampshire, and Georgia. And we just barely won by just a single point in bright red states like Florida and Louisiana, and then there’s Texas. Nowhere are the consequences of this election greater than Texas. In the Lone Star State, we lost every single statewide election. For weeks, I had been publicly warning on this podcast that we were in very real danger of losing everything in Texas. Far too few believed that was possible. I am very, very sorry that it came to pass. Texas has not had a Democrat governor since 1994. We haven’t had a Democrat senator since 1993. Now we’ll have both. Why were the results so overwhelming? Pundits and analysts will break down the results for weeks or months or even years to come, but several things are already evident today. Years ago, the very best political advice I ever got was from Heidi. She said, “It’s not about you. It’s about them. It’s about their kids, their families, their hopes, their dreams, their futures.” Too many politicians forget that. Take the state of Kansas, for example, a state that has not elected a Democrat senator since 1932. It just did. Here’s what exit polling showed were the top issues in Kansas. Number one, cost of living, energy, and groceries. That was listed as number one by 30.6 percent of voters. Corruption. Number two, 18.5%. The cost of the Iran war, 10.1%. The candidates are terrible, 7.9%. The Canada trade war, 7.6%. The GOP didn’t do enough to support Trump, 6.6%. Republicans didn’t pass the Save America Act, 5.6%. Trump’s focus on monuments, 5.5%, and data centers and AI, 3.8%. The top issue, cost of living, is very real. Too many in politics dismissed it. They didn’t understand. They pointed to the macro numbers showing the stock markets soaring, median income at record highs, and poverty at record lows. Those data are true, but they don’t tell all of the story. Here are some stats that are a lot more real and personal. Spam, Hormel’s processed meat substitute, broke record sales, selling 113 million cans last year. That is nearly as much spam as was sold during the entirety of World War II. 29 percent of Americans have used buy now, pay later for groceries this year. That’s double the share just two years ago. In August, banks repossessed 42% more homes than they did last year. In 2024, car repossessions topped 2.3 million, above the 2009 peak in the middle of the Great Financial Crisis. In 2025, 6% of 401k holders took hardship withdrawals, paying penalties. That is a record, and triple the norm. And here’s one that’s really stunning. Americans made more than 75 million paid plasma donations in 2026. That’s another record. That means 200,000 Americans every single day, with a needle in their arm, just to pay for groceries. That is very real pain from real Americans, and too many Republican politicians seem like they didn’t understand or they didn’t care. Food is too high, gas is too high, diesel is too high, insurance is too high, life is too high. Tariffs have made everything too expensive, and the Iran war has dragged on too long. It should have been brief, decisive, and over. It needs to end, and we should never, under any circumstances, give the Ayatollah billions of dollars. There’s a very real economic disconnect. Our K-shaped economy is a yawning divide. Last year, we saw the world’s very first trillionaire, a modern-day Thomas Edison, at the very same time that millions were struggling to feed their families. Data centers being constructed were turning billionaires into centibillionaires, while simultaneously the average American’s electricity bill went up 30% in the last five years. Understandably, people were pissed off, and elected Republicans didn’t do enough to address their very real pain. So, what do we do now? We need to listen and respond. We need to champion economic policies that make a real difference in working people’s lives, and we need to deal with the consequences. Texas is blue. That is a hard sentence to utter. But Texas, today at least, is blue. As we sit here today, I am the only statewide elected Republican who remains in Texas. That’s not something I ever thought I would say. We can be certain that the Democrats in Austin and in Washington will overshoot. In Texas, they will try to raise taxes dramatically. They may even try to adopt a state income tax, or even a California wealth tax. They will try to shut down the energy industry, destroying jobs across our state. They will embrace the radical transgender agenda. They will persecute those they perceive to be enemies, especially Elon Musk. And in Washington, they will attack Trump every single day, constantly. Impeachment hearings, subpoenas, his family, cabinet members, business leaders, open persecution, and nonstop retaliation. Make no mistake. Nationally, the radicals are in charge. The communists and the Islamists who have taken over the Democrat Party have now taken over the United States Congress. They will be unleashed. Sadly, that means many Americans will be hurt. Texans will be hurt. Their assault on business will make Texas a much less attractive place to start or grow a small business. Texas will become more like California if they succeed in halting all new investment into AI. The economic results will be dramatic. Over $700 billion in new projects are scheduled to start in the next year. If the Democrats shut them all down, our country will very likely go into a recession. That will suit the Democrats just fine. They’ll just blame it all on Donald Trump. In the next two years, we need to do two things. One, fight the madness. I will work with Democrats when they’re willing to be reasonable. Last night, I called James Talarico. I congratulated him on his very impressive victory. It was a pleasant conversation, and I told him that I looked forward to working with him to try to benefit Texas. So, if there are things like flood relief for the Hill Country, or trying to get the space academy to Texas, he and I will work together. But if the newly elected radicals push policies that hurt Texas, raising taxes, destroying jobs, opening the border, releasing violent criminals, threatening our children, undermining our constitutional rights, I will fight with all of my strength to defend Texas and to defend the Constitution. And number two, we need to rebuild, getting behind policies that directly benefit the constituents we lost. There’s a complicated story, no doubt, of what happened on Election Day, but as I see it, the key constituencies we lost were blue-collar voters, what had rightly become the core base of our party, Evangelical Christians, who didn’t show up with the same numbers and fervor as prior elections, farmers and ranchers. Tragically, we alienated rural America. Young people, who excitedly had voted Republican in 2024, and who shifted hard blue this cycle. And of course, Hispanics. For Hispanics, there’s a strong overlap with young people and blue-collar workers. In 2024, just two years ago, I was proud to carry Hispanics statewide in Texas by six points, and we swung the Rio Grande Valley red for the first time in a century. It can be done, but in this election, those Hispanic voters overwhelmingly went back Democrat. We have got to turn that around. And for young people, we need to be the party of the future. We need to champion policies that expand their future. Our two single biggest legislative accomplishments of the past two years, Trump Accounts and the school choice tax credit, which will unleash tens of billions of dollars in new scholarships for kids, are generationally powerful. I was proud to author both of those transformational policies, and yet too few candidates all across the country ran on that record. Too few voters were even aware of what we’d accomplished for their kids and their future. But we need to build. We need to expand to continue creating a new investor class for hundreds of millions of Americans, help everyone, every American, become an owner, to have real skin in the game, to create new generations of capitalists ready to reject socialism. People voted as they did because they were angry. Ironically, the Democrats that they elected are going to advance policies that will make affordability worse. The Democrats want gas prices higher. They want to ban gasoline engines altogether. Their extreme environmental mandates will drive up food prices and the prices of everything else. But hear me now: we will bring Texas back. I am filled with hope and optimism. Texas will be red again. We have not suddenly become a bunch of tofu-eating, gun-banning, tutu-wearing pinko commie liberals. That ain’t us. Texas is still Texas. We will rebuild as a true blue-collar party, not by embracing socialism, but by being real free-market conservatives. The way we built the Texas economic miracle in the first place, and we will build and rebuild America as well. When the zealots overreach, and they will, we will stand ready to lead in the direction of freedom, of prosperity, of safety, and security, and common sense. We will return to a new dawn of freedom in America. It is dark right now, but it is always darkest before the dawn, and morning is coming. That is my fervent prayer, and that is my commitment to you.

If you grew up playing WIFFLE BALL in the 80s and 90s, this one's for you... We didn't just play Wiffle ball. We built STADIUMS in our backyards. I remember mowing the grass on the LOWEST setting to outline our field. Eventually the grass would die, which absolutely pissed my dad off. 😂 We chalked batter's boxes. Made our own outfield distance signs. Our HOUSE ROOF was the right-field home run fence. Left field? A portable fence we built ourselves. We scraped together whatever money we could find for replacement Wiffle balls at the local hardware store. We organized tournaments that lasted ALL SUMMER. Ghost runners. Made-up ground rules. Hit the runner with the ball to get him OUT. We argued calls like it was Game 7 of the World Series. No umpires. No coaches. No adults organizing anything. Just neighborhood kids, a plastic bat, a plastic ball, and an imagination that never ran out. And looking back 30 years later, something hits me... We were learning how to COMPETE. How to solve problems. How to make our own decisions. How to handle winning AND losing. We were developing baseball instincts without a single lesson. We were falling in love with the GAME without anybody telling us we needed to. We just called it PLAYING. Man, what I'd give for ONE MORE summer afternoon on those backyard fields. ⚾️ Who else grew up this way? Tell me about YOUR backyard stadium.

Pat Murphy changed the course of my life, more than any other person... And I hated him for it for a long time. Quick story about how getting kicked off the ASU baseball team in college changed the course of my life for the better. These last few weeks have been weird for me. Watching this person who I had such a challenging relationship with get celebrated endlessly in the media is a weird phenomenon. Out of high school I signed a scholarship to play baseball at Arizona State. Much to mother's dismay i turned down more "educationally oriented" opportunities to play for the #1 team in the country. It was baseball heaven. The walls covered with the retired numbers of all time legends, Barry Bonds, Reggie Jackson etc. etc. My freshman year my roommate was Dustin Pedroia! You couldn't ask for anything better as a 18 year-old dreaming of becoming a pro. Murph was tough. No non-sense, kind of a dick, but the kind of coach you really want approval from. (I see this even in the Brewers players today) My freshman year I didn't get to play, I was pissed, felt like I deserved a shot but there were more senior guys that he felt like deserved continued chances even when they struggled. He was always very loyal to "his guys". There began to develop this sort of weird divide on the team between the older and younger players. The freshman were all very close and a few of us resented some of the chances repeatedly given to the older guys. In addition, we were immature, partied too much, didn't take school serious enough and acted entitled. (I can see this now in reflection). The culmination of all this internal conflict manifested after the "Rookie Show". A tradition at ASU where all the freshman had to make comedy skits and perform them in front of the whole team. A group of us freshman made a video mocking the "Leadership Team", a group of juniors/seniors that met together with murph after practices. Bad idea. I remember playing the video and no one laughing. Terribly awkward. The night ended and I didn't think too much of it, dumb skit but whatever. The next day Murph called me up to his office and told me he was kicking me off the team. He said it was the most offensive skit he'd seen in all his years and that someone needed to take the blame and he believed I was the ring leader. I'll never forget leaving that office and walking home. I was mortified. My whole life was just flipped upside down. I ended up transferring to UCI, where we made the school's first ever run to the college world series where we eliminated ASU and Murph in a walk off win in the 13th inning. It was peak redemption arc for me personally. That same week I was drafted by the yankees, got to play in Charleston, where I met my wife and the rest is sort of history. A real butterfly effect moment on how my life could have been different. For so long I had such a negative view of my experience with Murph. I thought I got screwed. But when you watch someone succeed at so many levels, ultimately ascending to the highest level of the profession, while being adored by everyone around them you have to stop and reflect on whether or not YOU might have been the problem. Regardless the wound is long healed and I have come to appreciate the experience. So cheers Murph CONGRATS on an incredible run.

Gun to your head, name a song that’s over 6 minutes long.

No "baseball" player is capable of doing this. They need a "glove" to catch a ball which is softer than a cricket ball and is hit way slower.💀

Logan Henderson posted the best executed outing of the day at a 112 proPitching+, even though the line was rough: 3 innings, 4 runs on a homer. The stuff and location graded out ahead of the result. Drew Rasmussen was next at 110.

Colorado State’s HC says his new defensive coordinator has been SLEEPING at the facility: “Kenny hasn’t been home in two weeks… We took our LB’s office and turned it into a bedroom.”

Trump: "We have 5 states where your child goes off to school as Tim and comes back as Tammy 3 or 4 days later. It's true. And teachers make a decision. 'Goodbye Timmy I love you so much, I'll see you later.' And you say, 'Where's my son? My son is in the hospital.' Can you imagine? They don't even need approval"

Unpopular opinion: Too many players have no clue what level they can play at. Parents don’t know. Most Travel coaches don’t know. Kids are spending money on showcases at schools where they have ZERO chance of ever playing. Someone needs to start being honest with these kids.