Texas State Rep. James Talarico told Lawrence O’Donnell on The Last Word that Democrats have a “moral imperative” to flip Texas blue in light of backlash against immigration detention centers within the state.
Talarico discussed the backlash he’s seen against the White House when he appeared on the show, saying that the current administration is pressing back against his campaign because “they’re worried that we’re going to flip Texas.”
“There is something happening in Texas,” Talarico said. “It’s our job to harness that energy, to channel that backlash into a win at the ballot box. We have a moral imperative to win this race in November, because if we don’t win, we can’t help people.”
Talarico was recently thrust into the national spotlight when an interview with Stephen Colbert on the Late Show was allegedly barred from being aired. The interview was later posted to the show’s YouTube channel.
Talarico addressed the controversy, saying the incident over the Colbert interview felt a little bit like “deja vu.”
“It felt a little like deja vu because we’d just gone through this at The View,” he said. “Trump’s FCC launched an investigation into The View after I appeared on that program, and so to have it happen again with the Late Show, again, it just felt like a bad rerun.”
One of Talarico’s primary opponents, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, discussed the row over the interview earlier Tuesday on The Briefing with Jen Psaki, saying her team received a phone call about the equal time rule.
“In that call, they explained that they actually told CBS that they could go ahead and move forward with the interview with James Talarico. They just needed to offer me equal time. I did not get a request from the Colbert Show to go on.”
Colbert addressed the controversy further on his show Tuesday night.
“We put the interview on our YouTube channel because of something called the equal time rule,” Colbert said, “and that rule says that if a show on broadcast television has a qualified candidate on during an election, they have to offer equal time to all that candidate’s opponents.”
Colbert said that late-night talk shows have historically been exceptions to the equal time rule.
“It’s a pretty famous rule, but here’s the thing: There has long been a very famous exception to that rule, and that exception included talk shows, interviews with politicians,” he said. “We looked, and we can’t find one example of this rule being enforced for any talk show interview, not only for my entire late-night career, but for anyone’s late-night career, going back to the 1960s.”
Tim Collins is a platforms producer and editor at MS NOW.