Rep. Issa Says Redistricting Creates More Seats in Play

You were in Texas recently as well and stumping for Ken Paxton. If it looks this tight in a state like Texas, does, that automatically favor the Republican? It does. You know, if you look at total registration, if you're in California, where you have a ten point advantage as a Democrat, all you have to do is have people at the end fall evenly based on registration, and you win. The same is true, but in the other way in Texas. And Ken Paxton is in fact healing the wounds of a difficult primary. And I think it's important to understand. A couple years ago, Cruz was only one by 2.25%. So it's not unusual, even for a popular incumbent to have a difficult time in Texas in these midterms. Well, and there's the redrawn congressional map there to consider as well. You know, a little something about redrawn maps, and I do. And here I was, I was asked to run in Texas and turned it down. But uh, uh, yes, they, uh, they have some very good seats and they have some that are a little leaner as a result of the whole effort backfire. It will backfire some, at least in some states. In other words. The way you gerrymander is actually you make winnable but lean seats versus real good seats on both sides. And so these swing state seats that have now been created in these states actually create more seats in play. It may be taking away from one party, but it's also creating ones that you have to pour a ton of money in. Uh, and candidly, uh, you know, in my seat, which I'm retiring from, they poured a huge amount of money and in hopes of displacing the very popular naval officer who's also a county supervisor in my district. Retiring is a beautiful thing. You feel free to speak, or so we like to pretend. Congressman, I guess, you know, you become a statesman. The moment is that. You're right. You're just a rotten congressman until you retire. And then you're a state loved by D's and R's. So do you. Are you buying into the narrative around this election? Your speaker, Mike Johnson, says polls are just wrong, that the sample data is faulty, that there is not a blue wave coming. But boy, we have a lot of people who are smarter than I am coming on this show to explain why that's not right. Well, uh, one of my best friends is Frank Luntz, and I've never met a man who's more willing to say all polls are wrong except one on Election day. And so the question isn't, are the pollsters wrong? Of course they're wrong. Are they wrong enough to make a difference in holding the House and the Senate in Republican hands? And that's, of course, unknown. But I think it's interesting how much the Democrats are sending out their biggest guns, including President Obama. Right. Uh, very actively. They know that it's not synched. And at the same time, President Trump is making an unparalleled amount of, uh, campaign events, particularly in those red states, to hold the red states red. Well, obviously, polls and prediction markets may prove to be wrong. They certainly were in Brazil over the weekend with the surprise result of the presidential election, Flavio Bolsonaro, of course, coming out on the losing end of it. Now we should be ready when you go into an election, apparently. Well, he was asked to surrender his passports. Now we have reporting that he's just landed in the U.S., and the State Department is granting him and his family visas. What reason do you see possible for that, Congressman? Well, first of all, if he's out of the country, then it settles the question of of the transition of power. So it may in fact be whether he stays here a long time or not, part of a peaceful transition. And I think there's a lot to be said for, uh, quite frankly, a losing president departing rather than, you know, sponsoring a coup or an attempt to not have that which has happened in South America many times, including Venezuela, obviously. So I'm not considering it a negative. Uh, but at the same time, the fact that we're allowing him in doesn't mean we're allowing him to return or conduct any activities that would affect that transition of power. So I think when we look at international, I'll always ask, what are the scenarios that could be positive even in something that is not candidly normal? I know we're hoping to talk a little bit about the Israeli election, and here in a situation in which a man who can always pull victory out of defeat, President or Prime Minister Netanyahu, appears to be behind, which means he has the possibility of not being first to try to form a government. But he's been there before. So I would suspect that that's a good example where looking at what might happen based on the actions ten days to come, is just as important as the outcome of election. And unlike a presidential election in which one person win, one loses. In Israel, the first round doesn't mean it's the last round. Right. And particularly on the eve or during a war in the eve of a possible reentry, uh, in a more significant way. So considering that we have maybe a couple of more rounds, that is a new lease on life for Benjamin Netanyahu, he would essentially be extended as prime minister. Do you trust him to use that time wisely when it comes to Iran? Because many fear that he could act irresponsibly in an effort to change the political dynamic on the ground? Well, I think president, you know, Prime Minister Netanyahu will do after the election if he's granted another three months. Yes, uh, he'll do what he's done up until now, which is he'll be aggressive as much as he can with U.S. support against southern Lebanon, the the continued challenges in, uh, in Gaza and the West Bank and clearly in Iran. And so if the likely, you know, escalation that President Trump has alluded to, yes, occurs, uh, I think he's he's been solid in saying he'll be he'll be with us in that The greater question, though, is if we haven't been able to do it in two years, are we going to be able to do a nearly two years? Are we going to be able to do it in three more months? So if there's no change for Israel, measurable for the voters, three months from now, when they go back to the polls, they'll probably say, you got an additional three months. We're done. So it could hurt him. If there's a decisive change, uh, if the IRGC if if the government were to collapse, um, then that would change a lot of things. But that's a big if in three months. And let's remember, we found out in the hard way. I'm afraid that over overturning Iran's secondary leadership, uh, which is this broad group of, of elite military and so on, has been much more difficult, as has getting effective sanctions. Of course, there's less than three months left of this current Congress in the lame duck session. Is shaping up to be quite busy. We've got talk of reconciliation, of raising the debt ceiling. There's regular government funding that needs to be dealt with by December 11th. Set expectations for us. Well, I think the first expectation is that Speaker Johnson will use this time to do what adults do if he is forming a speakership in the next Congress. Of course, he'll do that if he's anticipating passing the gavel. He and Hakeem Jeffries, because I think they're both adult leaders. I think that what they'll do is they'll figure out what Hakeem doesn't want to have in the next Congress, for example, the debt ceiling. You think Democrats want to raise it? I believe that it's in the country's best interest, for example, not to have that be a fight that the new Congress has to face. So I think that they'll talk about a significant period of time for the benefit that actually benefits both parties. Um, because at the end of the day, they're going to raise the debt ceiling. Now, that's a question of how tumultuous. Will it be and who will get the blame if it doesn't happen? So that's an example. But the lame duck session, even when there is a possible change in leadership historically, is an opportunity for some controversial things on rare occasions. But mostly it's for all these things that people think we should do, we haven't done. And I'll give you one example. In the last, just before President Biden left, we passed an escalation of about 10% of the federal court judges. They hadn't been raised. A number of them hadn't been raised in over 20 years. You can imagine the growth of the of the caseload. President Biden vetoed it. We are now looking in the bill is there. We're looking at possibly moving that. And we have some mundane things on both sides, and some of them belong to departing members who everyone has a little bit of a soft spot for in both both parties. Hopefully I'm one of them. So all of that's going to happen. Okay. However, we are going to be facing, uh, if there's a transition, we're also going to be facing the reality that we are in a domestic situation where we have to get along for the good of the country, and we are embroiled in a number of battles around the world, not of our own making, Ukraine obviously being one of them. Uh, Iran, to a certain extent, we certainly didn't started. So, uh, there has to be a come, come together. And I know that you always see when we don't behave, but I'm one of those people that knows that within both parties, there are people who are willing to, uh, particularly in the lame duck session, do the right thing. And lastly, the defense authorization. For over half a century, we have passed it every single Congress, and it still needs to be passed. So in the lame duck, I fully expect that we will pass that on a broadly bipartisan basis.