Part Two – What They Told Us
I never made it inside the Trump rally.
We covered that.
Kate and I tried.
The building filled up.
The doors closed.
We walked around, watched supporters, watched protesters, watched the presidential visit unfold over Grand Island, got Dairy Queen and went home.
Could’ve been worse.
Because at home I had something considerably more dangerous to a political speech than a protest sign.
A pause button.
Pause.
Rewind.
Search.
Read.
Back to video.
And I started sorting claims into categories.
- True.
- Mostly true.
- Needs context.
- Misleading.
- Bullshit.
- And occasionally: Well, fuck. He’s right.
Because if I’m only willing to tell you when politicians I dislike are wrong, I’m not doing journalism.
I’m doing propaganda with better grammar.
Mike Hilgers: We Fought Joe Biden
Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers had a pretty simple pitch.
We fought Joe Biden.
Student loans.
Title IX.
Energy regulations.
California truck rules.
New York climate laws.
Some of those claims held up pretty well.
Nebraska really did participate in major litigation challenging Biden administration policies. The student-loan fight was real. The Title IX fight was real. Nebraska challenged California’s advanced clean-fleet rules, and California ultimately withdrew the relevant federal waiver request and repealed the challenged private-fleet and drayage provisions.
That doesn’t mean every courtroom fight ended with Mike Hilgers standing on the courthouse steps holding Joe Biden’s severed regulatory head.
For example, Nebraska challenged the Biden EPA power-plant rule, but courts denied requests to stay it. The Trump administration later moved to repeal the rule.
Those are different things.
But the basic claim that Hilgers spent a lot of time fighting federal Democratic policies?
Yeah.
That’s true.
Then There’s Medical Cannabis
This is where I have a problem.
Nebraskans voted on medical cannabis.
Not narrowly.
Roughly 71 percent approved patient protections.
About 67 percent approved regulation.
Now, there were legitimate allegations of petition fraud.
Investigate that.
Prosecute it.
If somebody forged signatures, hold them accountable.
But don’t confuse fraud by petition circulators with the votes of hundreds of thousands of Nebraskans who showed up afterward and said:
Yes. We want this.
Hilgers and Secretary of State Bob Evnen advanced arguments involving invalid signatures, fraud and improper notarization in challenges to the measures.
Then, in September 2026, the Nebraska Supreme Court unanimously upheld the voter-approved medical cannabis laws.
A separate federal-preemption challenge brought by former state Sen. John Kuehn was dismissed for lack of standing. That court did not decide the underlying preemption question.
That’s context.
And it leaves me with a question for an attorney general who spent his rally speech telling Nebraskans how hard he fights to protect us from government overreach:
Who protects Nebraskans from you when you don’t like what Nebraskans voted for?
You don’t get to celebrate the will of the people only when the people agree with you.
That’s not democracy.
That’s a fan club.
A Mechanic’s Intermission: Right to Repair
This subject kept coming up Monday, and this is one of the rare places where I don’t need a politician to explain to me how modern equipment works.
I do this shit for a living.
Modern trucks, tractors and equipment aren’t just engines and wrenches anymore.
They’re modules.
CAN networks.
Sensors.
Software.
Programming.
Calibrations.
Aftertreatment.
Security access.
You can own every wrench Snap-on has ever financed and still be dead in the water if the manufacturer won’t give you the information, software or access required to finish the repair.
That’s the real right-to-repair fight.
In 2026, the Federal Trade Commission reached a settlement with Deere requiring broader repair access, including fault-code information, manuals, troubleshooting information, programming and pairing capabilities and tools needed to restart equipment after certain emissions-related shutdowns.
That’s meaningful.
Repair Is Not Delete
And here’s where politicians can make a complicated technical issue sound simple enough to fit on a bumper sticker.
Right to repair is not the same thing as emissions deletion.
Those are separate issues.
Right to repair is about whether the owner or independent technician can access the tools, information and software necessary to diagnose and repair equipment.
Emissions regulation determines what that equipment must comply with.
An emissions deletion intentionally disables or removes required emissions-control systems.
Repairing an emissions system is not deleting it.
Temporarily overriding a derate or shutdown so legitimate diagnosis and repair can occur is not the same thing as permanently defeating the system either.
EPA guidance in 2026 explicitly recognized legitimate repair access while maintaining emissions-compliance requirements.
So when we get to Trump’s claims about farmers, repairs, diesel and emissions in Part Three, remember this section.
Because the distinction matters.
Adrian Smith: We Delivered
Then came Congressman Adrian Smith.
Smith did something incredibly inconsiderate.
He mostly survived the first round of fact-checking.
His pitch centered heavily on taxes.
No tax on tips.
No tax on overtime.
Tax relief for seniors.
They’re also more complicated than the slogans.
Because tax law has this annoying habit of containing definitions, caps, eligibility requirements and fine print.
So my ruling on Smith’s basic tax pitch:
Mostly true.
Needs fine print.
Adrian Smith survives to Level Two Research.
Congratulations, Congressman.
Don’t fuck it up.
Jim Pillen: Stay on the Team
Then Gov. Jim Pillen gave us…
a pep rally.
Nebraska.
Farmers.
The Sandhills.
Agriculture.
Tax relief.
Veterans.
Freedom.
Women.
Sports.
Tom Osborne.
Football.
America.
I was waiting for somebody to roll out Herbie Husker carrying a Runza.
Then Pillen got to the line that bothered me.
“We have to stay on the team of Republicans, no matter what the circumstances are.”
No.
We don’t.
Political parties aren’t football teams.
You don’t inherit one at birth and keep wearing the jersey until somebody puts you in the ground.
A political party should have to earn your vote every single election.
And telling your friends and family why they should vote straight Republican isn’t a civics lesson.
It’s a party recruitment pitch.
That doesn’t make everything Pillen said false.
Nebraska has cut income-tax rates.
The state has put substantial money toward property-tax relief.
Those are real.
So are the state’s budget pressures.
So is the continued frustration Nebraskans have with property taxes.
Both things can be true.
Pillen also went after his opponent, Lynne Walz, over property taxes, SNAP and her record involving convicted drug dealers.
Some of those attacks contain underlying facts.
They also demonstrate one of the recurring features of campaign speeches:
Take a complicated record.
Compress it until it fits in one sentence.
Remove everything that makes the sentence less useful politically.
Then repeat.
Governor Pillen Commissioned a Navy
There was also one thing I absolutely refuse to leave out.
Donald Trump is apparently an admiral.
Not metaphorically.
Pillen made him an honorary admiral in the Great Navy of the State of Nebraska.
This is a real Nebraska honorary tradition.
We are a landlocked state.
The only triple landlocked state in the nation.
Which makes it better.
Admiral Trump.
Guardian of the Platte.
Supreme Allied Commander of Lake McConaughy.
Protector of Nebraska from hostile pontoons.
I have no fact-check.
I just needed you to know this happened.
Pete Ricketts: Democrat Dan
Then came the guy who started this whole adventure for me.
Pete Ricketts.
The night before, I’d written a long post about his record as governor.
By Monday morning, hundreds of people were sharing it.
Now Ricketts had the President of the United States in Grand Island.
Thousands of supporters.
National attention.
So what did he choose to tell Nebraska?
A whole lot about Dan Osborn.
Or, more specifically:
Democrat Dan.
He repeated it.
Because that’s the frame.
Here’s what is actually true.
Dan Osborn is running as an Independent.
Nebraska Democrats did not nominate a candidate for the Senate race.
Democratic-aligned organizations have supported Osborn.
National Democrats would very much like Pete Ricketts to lose.
Osborn says he will not caucus with either party.
So calling him a Democrat isn’t a neutral biographical description.
It’s political branding.
Maybe you think his positions make him functionally Democratic.
Fine.
Make that argument.
But make the argument.
Don’t replace it with a nickname and hope nobody notices.
Follow the Money
Ricketts also attacked the money behind Osborn.
Fair game.
Outside political money matters.
Dark money matters.
Donor networks matter.
But standards are only useful if they work in both directions.
The Ricketts family itself has been one of the most significant political-spending families in Nebraska and national Republican politics.
So yes.
Follow everybody’s fucking money.
That’s the standard.
The Leaked Audio
Ricketts also leaned on leaked audio and transgender issues to argue Osborn says one thing publicly and another privately.
If a candidate is saying one thing in public and another thing behind closed doors?
That’s absolutely fair to investigate.
Including when the candidate is the one I currently support.
My guy doesn’t get a free pass.
But leaked audio also needs the same thing everything else needs.
The full recording.
The surrounding conversation.
The exact words.
The context.
Then judge it.
Immigration
Ricketts’ immigration section moved fast.
A fatal Nebraska crash.
Border security.
ICE.
Osborn’s comparison to Nazi Germany.
Voting rights.
Social Security.
The border wall.
Some of those underlying statements are real.
That doesn’t mean the entire package should be swallowed without checking it.
A real quote can be used misleadingly.
A real event can be used to imply something broader than the evidence establishes.
A candidate can hold a position you hate without every attack on that position automatically becoming accurate.
That’s why we’re doing this.
Something Was Missing
And after listening to Ricketts, I kept coming back to the same thing.
A huge portion of his argument was about what Dan Osborn supposedly really is.
Democrat.
Radical.
Dangerous.
Fine.
Tell me why I shouldn’t vote for Dan Osborn.
But at some point I need the other half of the sales pitch.
What are you going to do for Nebraska?
Not the Republican Party.
Not Donald Trump.
Nebraska.
Then I Noticed the Architecture
By the time Ricketts finished, the structure of the afternoon was becoming pretty obvious.
Hilgers: We fought them.
Smith: We delivered.
Pillen: We are Nebraska. Stay on the team.
Ricketts: They’re coming. Dan Osborn is one of them.
Then came Donald Trump.
And Trump took all of it and turned the volume knob until it came off in his hand.
Which was fascinating after what I’d seen outside.
Because outside?
Normal people.
Trump supporters.
Protesters.
Neighbors.
Inside the speeches?
Teams.
Enemies.
Us.
Them.
Maybe our politics is more broken than our people are.
Fact-Checking Politics Is Fucking Exhausting
Here’s another thing I learned.
A politician can make a misleading claim in eight seconds.
It can take me forty-five fucking minutes to explain what’s wrong with it.
Because bullshit travels light.
Context needs luggage.
Apparently I’ve decided to become the baggage handler.
And that brings me to Trump.
I loathe Donald Trump.
Still do.
But the rules don’t change because Donald Trump walked to the microphone.
If he’s wrong, I’ll tell you he’s wrong.
If he’s misleading, I’ll tell you what’s missing.
If he’s completely full of shit, we’ll call it bullshit.
And if he’s right?
Then he’s right.
Facts don’t owe my opinions loyalty.
Neither do yours.
Trump spoke for roughly 75 minutes Monday night.
Iran.
Diesel.
Farmers.
Right to repair.
China.
Beef.
The economy.
Immigration.
Dan Osborn.
Mail voting.
Five-thousand-dollar checks.
And approximately seventeen conversational exits Donald Trump drove past because another sentence had just occurred to him.
Donald Trump gets his own article.
Because he needs one.
And because buried inside all the exaggeration, wandering, political theater and claims that needed a forklift full of context…
were a few moments where I had to sit there looking at the evidence and say:
Well, fuck.
He’s right.
That’s next.
Next: Part Three — Donald Trump
Seventy-five minutes.
Iran.
Red diesel.
Right to repair.
Farmers supposedly going to jail.
Agriculture.
China.
Beef.
The economy.
Immigration.
Dan Osborn.
Five-thousand-dollar checks.
And receipts.
So many fucking receipts.
Read the series:
Part One: Inside the Circus · Part Two: What They Told Us · Part Three: Donald Trump
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