Latest / The Kinzinger Report / Republicans Abandon Trump | Red-State GOP Leaders Back Democrats as Polls Collapse in Trump Country — October 5, 2026

Transcript

Republicans Abandon Trump | Red-State GOP Leaders Back Democrats as Polls Collapse in Trump Country — October 5, 2026 · The Kinzinger Report

• 0:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Adam Kinzinger, and you're listening to the Kinzinger Report, where I bring you top stories and analysis on current events and the growing threats to our democracy.
• 0:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: After serving over a decade in Congress, I hope you know what's true and what really matters so that we can all work to save this country that we love so much.
• 0:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hey everybody, Connor Lamb here filling in for Adam.
• 0:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: I am a former member of Congress from Western Pennsylvania.
• 0:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: He and I served together.
• 0:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: He was Republican.
• 0:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: I am a Democrat, but we realized that we both served the country in the military as well and has veterans.
• 0:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think we had basically the same understanding of our oath to the Constitution and the need for people to stand up and speak out on behalf of this democracy.
• 0:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I am honored to fill in for Adam today.
• 0:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I guess we might as well get started.
• 0:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Our top story is that Republicans are abandoning Trump's party and they're doing it out in the open.
• 1:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: So over the last few weeks, there have been dozens of Republicans who endorsed Democratic candidates.
• 1:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're talking former governors, party leaders, longtime donors, and it turns out the voters are really right there with them.
• 1:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: So New York, New polls from New York Times have Democrats ahead or within one point in four states that Trump won easily.
• 1:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll also get into Ken Paxon, getting caught on tape again, Trump posting a Republican Senator's cell phone number, over daylight saving time, and what Cash Patels FBI is doing ahead of the election, as well as Trump asking Republicans to vote by mail after years of calling it a scam.
• 1:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: So do me a favor, like this video, share it with someone who needs to see it, and subscribe so you never miss an episode.
• 1:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: All right.
• 1:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's get into it.
• 1:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: We start with Republicans crossing the aisle and what it actually means.
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Over the last few weeks, a long list of Republicans have come out in support of democratic candidates way more than normal.
• 2:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we've got two former governors of Kansas, a former governor of Montana who used to run the RNC and more than 20 prominent Texas Republicans back in James Talereco over Ken Paxton.
• 2:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now, some of these endorsements are bigger than others, but you have to remember that a lot of the voters in these states have literally never voted for a Democrat in their life.
• 2:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: For many of them, that is a big step to take, so when you see a former party official, or even someone you used to vote for, take that leap.
• 2:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: It becomes a whole lot easier.
• 2:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: More and more voters that they're taking that leap.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: So you can see in a recent poll from the New York Times in Sienna, Taurico is up six in Texas.
• 2:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Shared round is up three in Ohio.
• 2:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Iowa is a one-point race, and Kansas which trump won by 16 points is a coin flip.
• 2:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: When pollsters asked the voters in those states what they want from a senator, at least in this 49% said somebody who will stand up to Trump.
• 2:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: 27% said somebody who will support him.
• 2:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Again, these are supposed to be the Republican strongholds, and they want someone to stand up to Trump.
• 3:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: So think about where that leaves the Republicans.
• 3:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's been obvious for a while that they'd be playing defense.
• 3:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: The guy in the Oval Office made sure of that.
• 3:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: What they didn't plan on was having to defend states that Trump won by double digits.
• 3:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: So now they're spending real money in places they aren't used to worrying about, and every dollar that goes there is a dollar that's not going to the races that are usually competitive.
• 3:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: For years, Republicans in these red states have been able to count on one thing.
• 3:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Even if you don't love Trump, you'll close your eyes and vote for the team.
• 3:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Life-long Republicans crossing the aisle is a big part of why that strategy is starting to crack.
• 3:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's one thing to hold your nose when everyone around you is doing it.
• 3:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's another when people you've been voting for are now saying the Democrat is the better choice.
• 3:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: This happened when I first ran for Congress in a district that Trump won by 20 and it shattered their entire strategy.
• 3:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: That brings us to Ken Paxson who got caught on tape again.
• 3:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Last week Adam covered leaked audio from one of Paxson's campaign events where he admitted that Trump's big midterm convention that they did sank the GOP numbers instead of raising them.
• 4:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, over the weekend, more embarrassing audio when public, this time Paxton wasn't complaining about Trump.
• 4:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: He was complaining about his own campaign.
• 4:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: Have a listen.
• 4:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: or what we're doing or I can't I have no I don't have really to change anything.
• 4:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I have to live with whatever I've got.
• 4:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: So it is a challenge.
• 4:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: There you have it.
• 4:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is Washington's race and Pakistan is just along for the ride.
• 4:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: He isn't campaigning on the issues that mattered to him much less the ones that matter to Texans.
• 4:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's simply taking orders from the Trump political team and the National GOP.
• 4:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Considering the shape the National Party is in right now.
• 4:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now, keep in mind, Trump's involvement in this campaign is nothing new.
• 4:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: He was the one who picked Paxon in the first place, and pushed him through the primary over Corrent.
• 5:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now that the polls have gone south, he's trying to run the campaign himself.
• 5:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: What's funny is, the election hasn't even happened yet, and Trump still can't seem to say anything nice about the guy.
• 5:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: He used his own convention speech to crack jokes about how Paxton looks.
• 5:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: He knows he's got a loser on his hand, and the problem is, he's the one who chose him.
• 5:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: That same thing happened to me too, the guy I ran against, Trump came to town to campaign for him, and just made fun of him on stage.
• 5:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know why he does that.
• 5:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Next, the Republicans doxed a Republican senator over daylight savings time.
• 5:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's right, with prices up at home and the war continuing overseas, the GOP is fighting tooth and nail over the issue of daylight savings time.
• 5:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: The bill in question is the Sunshine Protection Act, which would make daylight savings time permanent.
• 5:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Trump wants it, but Tom Cotton of Arkansas has been blocking it, citing dangerously dark winter mornings.
• 5:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's the kind of small boring disagreement that used to be most apolitics, actually kind of refreshing to see that again, but the president clearly doesn't see it that way.
• 6:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: On Saturday, he posted a rant on true social telling supporters that Tom Cotton, a friend of mine, is holding up a very important bill.
• 6:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: He then posted Cotton's personal cell phone number and urged people to call it and convince him to support the bill.
• 6:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now, Tom Cotton isn't one of the moderates who break with Trump from time to time.
• 6:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's one of the most loyal Republicans in the entire Senate.
• 6:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's been with Trump on just about everything.
• 6:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: His reward for that loyalty is a magmaab sent to his phone over clocks.
• 6:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: The insanity was obvious to other Senate Republicans.
• 6:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Here's John Kennedy of Louisiana.
• 6:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: The president, as we know, can be sometimes...
• 6:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: He exists loudly.
• 6:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: He can be tempestuous.
• 6:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: He can go from zero to a hole in about three seconds.
• 7:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think he should have given out time.
• 7:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: So full number.
• 7:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that's going to help convince Tom.
• 7:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I have your cell phone number, but I promise not to give it out.
• 7:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Zero to a hole in about three seconds.
• 7:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Couldn't have said it better myself.
• 7:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: The story here is not about daylight saving time, that's not even about trumping to snapping at one of his closest allies.
• 7:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's about a president facing a wave election and focusing on all the wrong things.
• 7:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: While Democrats beat the drum on the issues that really matter, Trump is burning the few bridges he has left over minor issues.
• 7:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's the help Republicans are getting from the White House with four weeks to go.
• 7:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that loyalty test prompts the question, is there anything cash-patel won't do for Trump?
• 7:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Five months ago, FBI Director Cash Patel vowed on Fox that he would pursue arrests over the supposed conspiracy to steal the 2020 election.
• 7:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: I've been with the president nearly since day one on this, he said, and it's coming soon.
• 7:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: But there haven't been any arrests because there was no conspiracy.
• 8:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Still, according to a new report from the Atlantic, Patel hasn't stopped trying to find one.
• 8:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: The publication spoke with more than 40 officials, agents, and members of Congress.
• 8:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: They described how Patel has ordered staff to prioritize digging up non-existence evidence of the conspiracy, often abandoning serious national security cases, and nobody is allowed to question the investigation.
• 8:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Take the case of Fulton County, Georgia.
• 8:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: In July, about 260 FBI employees were pulled off the regular work for two weeks to review ballots seized in that county.
• 8:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: They found nothing.
• 8:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: But two FBI analysts who questioned the process were swiftly escorted at the office.
• 8:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Many Trump loyalists are now walking away.
• 8:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Last month, a prosecutor quit overseeing Trump's grand conspiracy probe.
• 8:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: On his way out, he said, if you want indictments where there's no evidence, you have an ethical problem.
• 8:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: But Patel is still pushing forward with Trump's delusions, preparing to use his agency to so-k-os in the November midterms.
• 9:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Inside the Bureau, agents are worried about what they're being asked to do on election day.
• 9:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: A former senior FBI official told The Atlantic that he had received worried calls from former colleagues who described, quote, a real effort to bend people to the narrative on quote of the president's election conspiracy theories.
• 9:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Another agent said he contemplates election day and thinks, quote, I'm either going to be sick that day or they are going to have to fire me.
• 9:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Unwilled.
• 9:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Scary stuff.
• 9:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Patel would rather undermine our national security and our elections than cross Trump.
• 9:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we have our answer.
• 9:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's nothing he won't do for him.
• 9:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: And he isn't hiding why in August at an event with Trump on Long Island, Patel heaped praise on the president and then told him, President Trump, I'm living the American dream because of you.
• 9:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: that says it all.
• 9:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: And finally, Trump wants you to vote for him by mail.
• 9:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's think back on the president's angry tie raids against mail in ballots on true social.
• 10:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: In July, they were inherently corrupt.
• 10:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: And just last month, voting by mail was totally corrupt and out of control and a nation destroying scam.
• 10:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: And he tried more than wants to do something about it.
• 10:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Trump has signed two executive orders to restrict mail ballots nationwide.
• 10:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: The first would have thrown out ballots that arrived after election day.
• 10:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: The second would have made let the postal service refuse to deliver ballots to anyone who wasn't on a federal citizenship list.
• 10:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Both got blocked in court.
• 10:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: But now, Trump has reversed course, urging Republicans to vote by mail for Republican candidates in November.
• 10:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Republicans must win the 2026 midterm elections and we must use every appropriate tool he posted on Saturday.
• 10:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Whether you vote early, absentee by mail or in person, we must swamp the radical left Democrats with massive turnout.
• 10:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: This remarkable hypocrisy is an admission, really, that the effort to kill mail invoting has failed.
• 10:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: But there's more to it, for six years, Trump told his voters that mail-in ballots are how elections get stolen.
• 11:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Many of them listened and stopped voting by mail.
• 11:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: That cost him in 2020 and a cost for publicans again in the 2022 midterms.
• 11:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now he needs those votes back.
• 11:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: And let's not forget, Trump himself votes by mail.
• 11:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: He did it most recently in Florida this past March.
• 11:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: So what's changed since those angry posts?
• 11:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, nothing.
• 11:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: The rules are the same, the only thing that changed is that Trump has decided mail-in voting might help him this time.
• 11:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's how it's always worked with him.
• 11:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Voting by mail was a scam when he thought it hurt his chances, but now that he needs it, it's an appropriate tool.
• 11:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Funny how that works.
• 11:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's the show for October 5th.
• 11:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for letting me sit in.
• 11:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: If this was worth your time, like it, share it with someone who needs to see it, and subscribe.
• 11:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: So you never miss an episode.
• 11:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll see you back here tomorrow.