Hello, Danger Corps! It’s Tuesday, September 15, 2026, and Ted Cruz has finally discovered a form of constituent feedback even harder to ignore than voicemail: thousands of Texans booing directly into a live ESPN microphone.
Cruz showed up to College GameDay in Austin wearing burnt orange and spent much of his roughly nine-minute appearance getting booed, hearing chants of “Ted, you suck!” and being told to get off the stage. Apparently dressing like the home team does not automatically make you part of it.
And the reaction did not exactly come from nowhere. Texans still remember Cruz leaving for Cancún during the deadly 2021 winter freeze, while millions of people back home were without power, heat or safe water. More recently, Cruz has remained very busy building a national profile, podcasting, fundraising and reminding everyone that he still has presidential ambitions. Texans, meanwhile, continue dealing with the wonderfully glamorous subjects of property taxes, insurance costs, utilities, and whether the people they elect actually seem interested in them between elections.
Then came last week’s Republican midterm convention in Dallas, where Cruz was one of the featured speakers. His message was not exactly subtle. He warned that Democrats were being “overtaken by radicals” and singled out figures including Zohran Mamdani, Abdul El-Sayed and Texas Senate candidate James Talarico, declaring that Democrats “hate capitalism,” “hate the Constitution,” and “hate America.”
But the ugliest moment came right after Cruz had been talking about political hatred and violence. As he named Democratic politicians from the stage, a man in the audience could repeatedly be heard yelling “He should be shot!” When Cruz mentioned Talarico, it happened again.
Cruz did not stop the speech or condemn the comments from the stage. His office later declined to say whether he actually heard them, so we cannot fairly claim that he knowingly ignored the remarks. But the violent rhetoric was audible in video later shared by Cruz’s own social-media account.
And that is where the joke stops for a minute. You cannot warn America that political hatred is getting people killed, spend the rest of your speech portraying political opponents as existential enemies of the country, and then have someone in your own audience calling for those opponents to be shot without somebody saying: Absolutely not.
That is not left versus right. That should simply be the floor.
And Talarico was not some random Democrat Cruz grabbed out of a national talking-points folder. He is running for Texas’s other U.S. Senate seat against Ken Paxton, and recent polling has repeatedly shown the race competitive, including a University of Texas/Texas Politics Project poll putting Talarico at 42% to Paxton’s 39%.
No, we are not saying Texas has suddenly turned blue. But Republicans have gone from treating that Senate seat like inherited furniture to spending real money making sure nobody else gets to sit in it.
Cruz’s own political network is helping Paxton, too. His longtime Truth and Courage PAC has launched a multimillion-dollar effort supporting Paxton. That PAC previously received podcast-related revenue from iHeartMedia that triggered campaign-finance complaints. The FEC ultimately dismissed the soft-money allegation after investigators said they lacked evidence that Cruz directed the payments, so this is not a finding that Cruz broke campaign-finance law. It is simply another fascinating installment of “Nothing Illegal Has Been Proven, Please Stop Asking Why There Is So Much Money.”
And all of that makes what is happening with Talarico on television even funnier.
For the second time this year, a major late-night interview with Talarico has been moved off broadcast television. Earlier this year, Stephen Colbert’s interview with him went online amid concerns surrounding FCC equal-time requirements. Then Jimmy Kimmel announced that his own Talarico interview would also go online rather than air on ABC, saying FCC pressure was behind the decision.
Which sounds like an excellent plan until you remember that the internet exists.
The Kimmel interview immediately drew millions of views. Turns out trying to hide James Talarico on YouTube is a little like hiding a cheeseburger from a Labrador.😂 The more people appear to say, “Maybe you shouldn’t see this guy,” the more everyone naturally wants to seek him out.
Meanwhile, Cruz keeps finding microphones of his own and discovering something very different waiting on the other side: Texans. And apparently they have some notes.
While we wait to see how much louder Texas can get, we thought you could use a laugh!! 😂
Today we’ve got variety memes, episode links including The Dangerous One’s Ted Cruz Episode, livestream reminders, comments from your very own Danger Corps members, and plenty more dangerous fun below to get your Tuesday started off right!
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📞 Dave from Southern California on Cruz’s Presidential Run in Question 😆
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Pedophiles should be shot and pedophile supporters….. if we’re going to go there and excuse that behavior then that is the truth of things and Ted Cancun cruise is culpable if anything happens to our boy James Talarico, who has more faith Christianity and knowledge of Jesus than Ted Cruz holds in his pinky toe. He has a disgusting man.
I can't wait for James Talarico to be elected Texas's new US Senator!
Blue wave incoming!