Incoming House Oversight Chairman Robert Garcia laid out his investigative priorities: “We’re going to take on the Trump crime family. The amount of grift and corruption is unprecedented in American politics. You have Don Jr., whose wedding is being paid for by a Russian oligarch. You have Jared Kushner, who got two billion dollars from the Saudis when he left the White House… the president himself is a crypto scheme where he’s making billions of dollars.” Garcia added three more targets: “Our second investigation is focused on DHS and the abuses of ICE. Our third major investigation revolves around corporate corruption… our last investigation is going to be focused on the Jeffrey Epstein… over 1,000 women have come forward as survivors of Jeffrey Epstein.”

Dan Proft welcomed Scott McKay, publisher of The Hayride, senior editor at The American Spectator, and author of the new novel “The Necessary Men,” joking that the current moment reads “like chapter 20” of McKay’s fiction. Asked how the Trump administration should respond to the coming wave of investigations, McKay recommended restraint: “I think you ignore as much of it as you can because it’s not going to go over well with the public… people are going to look at that and go, ‘This has nothing to do with me. I sent you over there to do a job. This is not the job.’” McKay was skeptical that Jeffries could actually rein in his own caucus: “Hakeem Jeffries doesn’t have any power over these people, right? If he did, he would tell Robert Garcia, ‘No, you don’t,’ and I’m going to put somebody else in charge of the oversight committee.”

Proft raised reports of an additional 181-page Democratic dossier targeting executives and private companies for investigation. McKay warned conservatives broadly should take notice: “If you are a conservative of any prominence in this country, you probably should start thinking and acting and speaking defensively because you’re on a list… this is the French Revolution. This is the mindset of the Jacobins.” He argued Democrats are poised to overpromise and underdeliver on the affordability issues that actually drove the election: “The Democrats are not the people that can solve the affordability crisis. They’re the people who make it worse… you want to get lower gas prices and you put people in charge who don’t think cars should run on gasoline at all.” McKay’s advice for Trump: “If I’m Trump, I just veto everything… and I tell everybody why I’m vetoing it. And that’s really all you can do.”

The conversation shifted to unusual turnout patterns nationally and in Texas specifically. Proft cited NBC exit polling showing minimal Republican attrition: “2024 Republican vote for Trump, 94%. 2026 Republicans vote for Republicans, 93%. There’s no attrition there… what the story seems to be is there was a massive turnout for Dems. They got a presidential election turnout in a midterm election year, which is highly unusual.” Proft flagged Texas as particularly strange: Governor Greg Abbott “got the exact same vote total pretty much that he’s gotten four years ago, the three previous times he’s run,” while his Democratic opponent’s vote total jumped from roughly 3.5 million to 5.5 million. McKay responded, “Two million new Texans all voted for [a candidate] that nobody’s ever heard of. It’s weird… it is very weird to look at those numbers in comparison to the past.”

Proft added further anomalies: a reported 2.9 million new Texas voter registrations between 2022 and 2024 without proof-of-citizenship verification, down-ballot candidates like a railroad commissioner contender outperforming the Senate candidate, and all 254 Texas counties shifting left simultaneously with no outliers. McKay acknowledged the pattern was odd but cautioned against treating it as proof of wrongdoing: “You can’t just use election results as your only evidence. That’s not evidence. That goes nowhere. That has no impact.” Still, McKay argued the Texas GOP bears responsibility regardless of the explanation: “If they were registering illegal aliens in all of these places and then got them out to vote, and you were in control of the place, then that’s on you. You deserve to lose because you didn’t even protect yourself.” He extended the same logic to voting machine concerns: “You’re running the elections in Texas… I don’t want to hear this stuff as an excuse for losing the election… then the conspiracy theories fill the void.”

Proft cited one additional striking statistic: in several key 2026 Senate races, including North Carolina, Georgia, and Texas, Democratic candidates would have won even with zero Election Day votes, based purely on early and mail-in ballots. McKay said the broader lesson is operational rather than conspiratorial: Republicans had a significant financial advantage this cycle but spent it on outdated strategy. “All of this happened when Republicans had like three times the money to spend that Democrats had… and the consultants put it all on broadcast and cable TV. Great job, guys. Nobody watches that anymore.” McKay concluded that regardless of what further scrutiny of Texas turnout reveals, Republicans need to overhaul their get-out-the-vote operations to match what Democrats are clearly doing more effectively.