June 17, 2025 • 18 mins
What happens when billionaires, Bible verses, and blackjack collide in the heart of Texas?In this explosive and eye-opening episode of The Ben and Skin Show, hosts Ben Rogers, Jeff “Skin” Wade, Kevin “KT” Turner, and Krystina Ray dive deep into the high-stakes drama surrounding the push to legalize gambling in Texas. From fiery town halls in Irving to secret tunnels under Baptist universities, this episode uncovers the wild, weird, and wildly Texan story behind the state’s gambling gridlock.🎰 Key Highlights:
- “It was like introducing yourself to Texas by peeing on the Alamo.” — KT reads a jaw-dropping line from the upcoming Texas Monthly cover story, describing how the Sands Corporation’s arrival in Texas went off the rails.
- The Irving Showdown: Angry residents, signs reading “Don’t Vegas My Irving,” and a Sands executive getting booed off stage—until he flips the crowd with cold, hard numbers.
- Secret Casinos & Underground Tunnels: Did you know Irving once had a Vegas-style speakeasy with roulette, booze, and women for hire? And when the cops came, guests escaped through tunnels? Yeah, that happened.
- The Pastor Who Killed the Bill: How one 88-year-old preacher with 80,000 followers derailed Jerry Jones’ dream of legalized sports betting—just by showing up at Cowboys training camp.
- “The old guard do die.” — Skin drops a truth bomb about the slow march of progress in Texas politics.
- KT’s Award-Worthy Journalism: “I think I should get my Maroonie award… or macaroni?” — The crew roasts KT’s deep-dive reporting with classic Ben and Skin flair.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, it's the Ben and Skin Show ninety one
(00:01):
point one the Eagle. Now today is Tuesday. On Thursday,
we are going to be doing our show at the
Omni Frisco Frisco PGA Headquarters, and we are very excited
to be doing this because it's a big partnership with
Rollertown Beer Works. That's the brewery that Ben and I
are partners in up there in Salina, Texas, and we
(00:25):
have big, big doings.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
It's going to be so much fun.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
We're doing our show from three to six, and the
reason is is because Rollertown is a sponsor of the
KPMG Women's PGA Championship, So we're gonna be broadcasting at
the Top Golf Lounge this Thursday, three to six. If
you are going to the tournament at all any day
this entire weekend, you can go check out the Rollertown
(00:47):
booth behind the fan zone right behind whole number nine
where they are all tournament long with our beer and
all kinds of cool swag. And then of course you
can find our beer at the ice House that's overlooking
PGA Free Go.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
We love it out there. This place is so cool.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
It's a big epicenter of a huge event this weekend,
and we're gonna be doing our show there from three
to six. Now, if you don't have tickets yet and
you want to get them, you can use the promo
code roller Town ten to get a ten percent discount
on your tickets. But if you're going to the tournament,
go and see US Top Golf Lounge three to six
this Thursday.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
But right now it's time for this, and now it's
time for Ben.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Since Weekday up Day, featuring veteran news anchor kt fun tweets,
here are the important.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Stories he's currently tracking from around the world. Okay, obviously
it's June seventeenth, so a story that will be on
the cover of Texas Monthly in July. It's a little
weird that we'll be covering it now. But I got
a little early access to this article and it was
a big read and it was highly interesting, and it's
about basically the quest to legalized gambling in Texas and
(01:55):
how it has let's say, I taking a step back,
oh the last few months. WHOA. Let's start with how
they had a big town hall meeting in a March
in Irving at the Irving Convention Center, and obviously you know,
resort space for the sands companies being discussed and all
that stuff, and it's jammed with a bunch of people,
(02:15):
but it's a bunch of angry North Texan people. We
should also just remember that this is about a month
after Luca was traded, Okay, so quite a bit of
different time. There's no draft lottery to pull us out
of the duldrums. If you're a sports fan, if you're neutral,
you know you might not care. These people held signs
that read don't vegas my Irving, and there were some
(02:36):
flyers warning that predatory gambling breeds crime, failed marriages, and addiction.
You've got a bunch of hardcore people who are like,
I do not want gambling. I seriously think it's a
mega sin. You have that going on as well.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
So and let me just say, because I read a
lot about this at the time, I was very interested
in this because I was like, is this going to
be the home of the next you know, Mavericks silly
where they play their games and stuff. And there was
one particular businessman council member and Irving. They zoned it
in a way to where you can build a development
(03:11):
with or without gambling, and all the people that were
showing up and doing all the barking and freaking out
and holding up the John three sixteen signs and all that.
You know, they were saying what they were saying. But
all the people on the council were like, are you
guys idiots? We're Irving if we have a chance to
pump money into this thing we're doing.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
This article is very eye opening with all that. Okay,
this is good. So the town hall, the residents of
Irving had brought their pitchforks, but whether they'd used them
would depend on the performance of sans man in Texas.
Andy a Boot. He's a sixty something guy with stylish glasses.
Andy Aboot is going to be the guy who's really
trying to sell this to everyone. Works for Sands. Right,
(03:54):
six weeks before the town hall, they I'm just reading
this paragraph. It's good. Six weeks before the town hall,
they'd alien the team's fan base in the most spectacular
fashion by trading away Luca. Overseeing the wildly unpopular trade
was like introducing oneself to Texas by peeing on the Alamo.
Just like Auzie, Hey, we're here, let's whiz on the albumo.
I was like, man, that's a wild way to think
(04:15):
about it. That is a good paragraph. So a boot
comes on, goes up on stage and he's gonna deliver
his presentation and he's getting booed like crazy over the
next two and a half hours. He starts to convince
the crowd, like, you've got it all wrong. Sans is
not the problem. Here's what's going on. Texas has the
largest illegal gaming market. There's fifty three billion dollars in
(04:35):
illicit gambling happening in Texans. In Texas, Texans are playing
with slots on video terminals and convenience stores. They're placing
illegal bets on their phones. He's like, it's unregulated and
we're just wasting time. We could all be making money
here if we would just accept it and then regulate
it and get it legalized. He also said Texas was
losing five billion a year to casinos in neighboring states. Yeah,
(04:59):
probably makes sense.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
And honestly, Ben, it was probably a lot like the
moose situation. They weren't booing him, They're saying, ah booo,
it's just his name.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Yeah, Now what you were saying about the city council
members here's one. Kyle Taylor said, this is a town
that's always known as the ones who lost the Cowboys
and lost the Byron Nelson. So he was like for it,
but not everyone was. The crowd booed when he claimed
that SAMs was not a casino centric company but rather
a tourism driver. He pivoted to blame shifting. What about ism?
(05:32):
He said, quote, of course we have casinos, but you
know what, you have sixty five thousand illegal slot machines
in Texas today that no one's doing anything about. That's
his play. The evening goes on and he got sweatier
and more combative. At one point, he accused the audience
of being paid protesters, referencing the Oklahoma casinos, which I
(05:56):
don't think that's true, and the article didn't seem like
that's true. It says, in fact, though SANDS would sponsor supporters,
hiring people to attend the commission meeting and irving three
days later. One recruit was offered two hundred and fifty
dollars in free food, and there's text messages they have
is as a reminder you're there as a citizen, not
on behalf of Echo Canyon Consulting, which is owned by Sands. Gotcha.
(06:19):
So Sands was paying people to go and support it,
which this probably happy happens everywhere when there's like lobbyist involved. Yes,
I would imagine does that be illegal? I think it
probably probably should. How you're supposed to get get to
anything like fake support of fake booing. A boot said
(06:39):
they had to be escorted out by the police every night,
and it got bizarre and weird and it crossed the
lines of decency. Others had a different takeaway. One person
in Irving called it a total disaster. This is a
twenty five year old city councilman, twenty five years old
guy named Luis. He said for his side, he said
it was amazing, It was a lot of fun. But
he said by the end of it that people were
(07:01):
clapping in support of not supporting gambling. Right, they were
clapping to not support it, no, like we don't want it,
because they were like enjoying that. It was a big
riled up thing. Now, when we get back from a
quick song, I'm going to tell you about a wild history.
Did y'all know that there was a wild thing in
Irving happening with prostitution and gambling and it's now underground.
(07:24):
I'll tell you about it in a minute. So we're discussing,
you know, how this gambling in Texas could be legalized,
but how it's kind of lost stem over the past
few months. And some of those are from those meetings
that happened in Irving. And another thing that happened there
was a representative from Plano, a guy with the name
of Matt Shaheen, and he publicly swore to kill gambling
because it he said that it links casinos to sex trafficking,
(07:47):
which he's just being performative politics. It's what he's doing. Well,
then the Addlelsons step in with the Political Action Committee,
and then they started doing a bunch of ads in
his district, you know, saying that he was a moderate
who voted against a munch good jobs and that frustrated
the Republicans a little bit. So even though Miriam Maddilson
is donating a lot of money, in fact more to
(08:10):
Trump and Governor Abbott, she's also like one by one,
like the company as a whole has a lot of
political action committees who were dropping in money to run
ads against guys who are trying to stop gambling. From
going through it's highly interesting. But then there's a story
in this This article kind of goes into the middle.
(08:31):
It talks about this thing that happened in Irving. I
did not know this, and I was just amazed. So
there's a place in the nineteen thirties and forties called
top O Hill Terrace, right, Okay, yes, I'm telling you guys.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Like the best thing about that book is that it's
just a history of how politics, money, and organized crime
have been in this community and built it up since
what like the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Yeh, basically twenty thirties. It's a great book. Yeah. So
Tapahoo Terras an illegal home for gambling, booze in prostitution,
Vegas before Vegas. Some called it. Bonnie and Clyde went there,
Howard Hughes. What you have to realize, though, is think
about this.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
So when Ben and I were in high school, this
is what's so weird about where we live now.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Ben and I grew up in Richardson.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
When we grew up, when we graduated in eighty nine,
Frisco was nothing but farmland. Like, think about what Frisco
is now. Six It was nothing but farmland yea, And
actually like McKinney, which is one giant strip mall now
same thing. Nothing like half of Plano was still farmland.
Now all that's been developed. So when you talk about this,
(09:42):
you have to realize there's the urban core of Dallas,
but Irving was the country. Yeah, So you're talking about
going to like a rural area and then out in
the middle of that there would be some sort of
a business that would be the front for it, like
it could be a it could be a restaurant or something,
or a hotel, and it's the front for gambling in prostitution.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
So downstairs at this place a plush room with roulette
card tables, slots, booze, and women for hire. The police
seldom raided, but when they did, they were ready because
they had armed guards in a watch tower and they'd
sound an alarm to alert them if the cops were coming. Yeah,
and then they had basically as the cops were coming
up a hill is a very long driveway too, so
(10:25):
it took time for the cops to get up there.
They could fold up the card tables and things like that,
and then the guests would escape through underground tunnels dug
into the hill.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Pretty great think about that. Everyone leave in the underground tunnel.
The cops are coming.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
So now this casino is buried under a brick building
of Arlington Baptist University. Yeah, which I didn't know Arlington
Baptist University was a thing, but it's underneath that.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
So it's pretty crazy. And think I want you to
think about this too. One hundred years is not that
long ago. This was all within one hundred years of
where we are now pretty much.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
So now we need to talk about a who had
a big impact on where we stand today, because right now,
thirty nine states have legalized wagering on sports. Texas and
California are the biggest states by far who have held out.
New York is already they're in now. Twelve Texas major
League franchises have joined forces with popular apps like badamgm
FanDuel DraftKings, something called the Sports Uh, the Texas Sports
(11:22):
Betting Alliance. All the teams are, the Rangers are in it,
right think about how the Rangers are. The Rangers are
in that. So just as in the old days, it's
not hard to find ways around the law. It's very easy.
You can good on Bravada right now, get an account
if you want. I don't like using it. I had
a bravada kept ten years ago. I don't mess with that.
But you can do it like you can illegally bet
(11:44):
if you want to. So that's a pretty good point.
There's been doing survey in the university from the University
of Houston a couple of years ago. Seventy three percent
of Texans support allowing destination resort casinos. Sixty percent support
legal online betting on sports, and there's no difference of
opinion between Republicans and Democrats. It might be the one
thing that we can all agree on. But there's a
(12:05):
fellow that they talked about in this article, and it
was a guy who was a pastor from the first
Baptist Church in Fort Worth a long time ago, like
nineteen oh nine to nineteen fifty two. And I'm to
tell you in a second like why he's important to
this story. But you need to know that there was
(12:27):
a big day up in Frisco at the Star that happened.
It sounds like recently that didn't see actual date on this.
So all the people that were it was nineteen people
in the house were going there. Dan Patrick, yeah, representatives.
Dan Patrick was there and there was just gonna go
(12:47):
watch the cowboysch practice at training camp. This is yeah,
this is at the end of training camp last year,
twenty twenty four. Right, So Jerry's hosting all these people
and they're all hanging out. But Dan Patrick brought ed Young.
Ed Young is eighty eight. He grew up sorry Houston's
second Baptist church into a juggernaut, eighty thousand members across
(13:08):
six campuses. He had a TV show that was global.
He counseled George W. Bush when he was governor. He
is a big opponent of gambling, and his presence at
that hangout at the Star with Dan Patrick was enough
to scare away a bunch of senators of from voting
for legalizing gambling, because there has been signs even Governor
(13:32):
Abbott has said I think we should look into it,
when in the past he's been like, hey, I'll no,
because he's gotten a lot of money from Miriam Maddelson
over the past couple of years to say things like that,
and they kind of had their hopes of like maybe
this will go through and because Dan Patrick, but they
all talked about him, They're like, he's so savvy. Jerry
(13:52):
Jones is there. Jerry Jones wants gambling in Texas. Right,
of course they're all wooing. They're watching cowboys practicing. But
Ed Young, who's eighty eight, terrified everybody. I don't even
know that Ed Young's still alive now, honestly, I really
don't know that even got to that in the article.
But that was crazy to me. And you know why,
because they just told you he's in control of eighty
(14:13):
thousand voters. Okay, yeah, that's why I was. Because he's rich.
I don't understand.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
No, it's just it's And that's the thing is a
lot of politicians can be swayed by new money. I
really legitimately thought that marijuana and gambling would be legal.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
In the next couple of years.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
But there's also really really strong oil backed money that
let's just call it religious money that keeps that thing
at bay.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
So they said watch the cowich practice got aut aggressed
from some of the players. Drew Pearson let one senator
spouse try on his Super Bowl ring. That's a good
over her wining and dining the original eighty eight. But
there's one big problem. Everything was going according to plan,
which makes me think of Jerry and Miria Maddison probably
have talked before Zero Down, I have talked. Dan Patrick
(15:01):
brought his pastor and that's the one thing. Another thing
it says is at the twenty twenty five sessions, so
this was been a couple months ago, they blanketed the
airwaves with advertising for destination resorts. The word casino never used.
Greg Abbott mentioned that he did not have a problem
with online sports betting, but one lobbyist said in this article,
(15:23):
sans's biggest problem is they have Las Vegas bully mentality.
They think they can money whip everybody down here into submission,
and it's just not going to be that easy. And
the last session, do you know what came up recently,
the Texas lottery? You know what? All that's about a distraction.
It's a distraction. So no one's talking about legalizing sports
(15:46):
gambling and it's easy to go. We can't even get
our Texas lottery straight. How are we supposed to monetize
this multi billion dollar thing? How are we going to
have that organized? We can't even run the two billion
dollar Texas lottery.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
And isn't it hypocritical to say you can have a
lottery but you can't bet on a hand of black jack,
and that's the exact same things it is there.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
There are games of chance change.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
I mean, it's the And there's a lot of people
that will argue, like the majority of the people that
buy lottery tickets are people that can't afford it because
they it's hope. It represents hope for them. There's a
lot of people that gamble that it represents hope for them.
And so the whole, the whole idea of all of this,
and again you're you're talking about you're talking about who
has the biggest dollar, and so the idea that Vegas
(16:31):
comes in here and thinks they can money whip everybody,
they don't got the oil money. Texas was built on
oil money. And especially if you look at these smaller
rural communities where families became billionaires, almost all of them
represent like old traditional Christian values. Like I'm not even
talking about new or modern Christian values. I'm talking about
(16:54):
old style Bible study. And that is a very different meantality,
especially here in Texas. Then what a lot of what
I would just call your average Christian is pretty moderate
in the way they view the world.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
The last paragraph of the article said, many capital insiders
agree that the gambling cause has been set back years,
perhaps a decade or more. Oh wow, really that's a
bleak outlook for the Sands company. But they see it
another way. It means that legalization is just a matter
of time. It is. I thought we might be imminent
when they bought the team, and after reading that article,
(17:31):
I'm very clearly like it's gonna be way past twenty thirty.
It's gonna take it forever to get this past. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
I mean they've shifted their focus again. They're building the
resort no matter what. Yeah, they want the infrastructure. But
here's the other thing. The old guard it do die.
It absolutely do die. That's so interesting, man. And that's
the cover story of the New Texas Monthly.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Yeah, did July cover story heard here for the first
time ever. A nice setse. That's an amazing report you
to report on that report. I think I should get
my maroney. Ward what is it called? What do they
give macaroni? Uh? Coming up next?
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Before we get to this, I'll never forget the time
that Kevin looked Edward R.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Murrow dead in his eye and.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
He said to him, DM me for socks and panty purchases.
Oh no, and then he lost his reporting license. Christina
is going to stick around and play some music right
here on the Eagle.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Here you going, well, I'm gonna get my sock back, Dudemer,
that's your answer,
All right, it's the Ben and Skin Show ninety one
(00:01):
point one the Eagle. Now today is Tuesday. On Thursday,
we are going to be doing our show at the
Omni Frisco Frisco PGA Headquarters, and we are very excited
to be doing this because it's a big partnership with
Rollertown Beer Works. That's the brewery that Ben and I
are partners in up there in Salina, Texas, and we
(00:25):
have big, big doings.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
It's going to be so much fun.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
We're doing our show from three to six, and the
reason is is because Rollertown is a sponsor of the
KPMG Women's PGA Championship, So we're gonna be broadcasting at
the Top Golf Lounge this Thursday, three to six. If
you are going to the tournament at all any day
this entire weekend, you can go check out the Rollertown
(00:47):
booth behind the fan zone right behind whole number nine
where they are all tournament long with our beer and
all kinds of cool swag. And then of course you
can find our beer at the ice House that's overlooking
PGA Free Go.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
We love it out there. This place is so cool.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
It's a big epicenter of a huge event this weekend,
and we're gonna be doing our show there from three
to six. Now, if you don't have tickets yet and
you want to get them, you can use the promo
code roller Town ten to get a ten percent discount
on your tickets. But if you're going to the tournament,
go and see US Top Golf Lounge three to six
this Thursday.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
But right now it's time for this, and now it's
time for Ben.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Since Weekday up Day, featuring veteran news anchor kt fun tweets,
here are the important.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Stories he's currently tracking from around the world. Okay, obviously
it's June seventeenth, so a story that will be on
the cover of Texas Monthly in July. It's a little
weird that we'll be covering it now. But I got
a little early access to this article and it was
a big read and it was highly interesting, and it's
about basically the quest to legalized gambling in Texas and
(01:55):
how it has let's say, I taking a step back,
oh the last few months. WHOA. Let's start with how
they had a big town hall meeting in a March
in Irving at the Irving Convention Center, and obviously you know,
resort space for the sands companies being discussed and all
that stuff, and it's jammed with a bunch of people,
(02:15):
but it's a bunch of angry North Texan people. We
should also just remember that this is about a month
after Luca was traded, Okay, so quite a bit of
different time. There's no draft lottery to pull us out
of the duldrums. If you're a sports fan, if you're neutral,
you know you might not care. These people held signs
that read don't vegas my Irving, and there were some
(02:36):
flyers warning that predatory gambling breeds crime, failed marriages, and addiction.
You've got a bunch of hardcore people who are like,
I do not want gambling. I seriously think it's a
mega sin. You have that going on as well.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
So and let me just say, because I read a
lot about this at the time, I was very interested
in this because I was like, is this going to
be the home of the next you know, Mavericks silly
where they play their games and stuff. And there was
one particular businessman council member and Irving. They zoned it
in a way to where you can build a development
(03:11):
with or without gambling, and all the people that were
showing up and doing all the barking and freaking out
and holding up the John three sixteen signs and all that.
You know, they were saying what they were saying. But
all the people on the council were like, are you
guys idiots? We're Irving if we have a chance to
pump money into this thing we're doing.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
This article is very eye opening with all that. Okay,
this is good. So the town hall, the residents of
Irving had brought their pitchforks, but whether they'd used them
would depend on the performance of sans man in Texas.
Andy a Boot. He's a sixty something guy with stylish glasses.
Andy Aboot is going to be the guy who's really
trying to sell this to everyone. Works for Sands. Right,
(03:54):
six weeks before the town hall, they I'm just reading
this paragraph. It's good. Six weeks before the town hall,
they'd alien the team's fan base in the most spectacular
fashion by trading away Luca. Overseeing the wildly unpopular trade
was like introducing oneself to Texas by peeing on the Alamo.
Just like Auzie, Hey, we're here, let's whiz on the albumo.
I was like, man, that's a wild way to think
(04:15):
about it. That is a good paragraph. So a boot
comes on, goes up on stage and he's gonna deliver
his presentation and he's getting booed like crazy over the
next two and a half hours. He starts to convince
the crowd, like, you've got it all wrong. Sans is
not the problem. Here's what's going on. Texas has the
largest illegal gaming market. There's fifty three billion dollars in
(04:35):
illicit gambling happening in Texans. In Texas, Texans are playing
with slots on video terminals and convenience stores. They're placing
illegal bets on their phones. He's like, it's unregulated and
we're just wasting time. We could all be making money
here if we would just accept it and then regulate
it and get it legalized. He also said Texas was
losing five billion a year to casinos in neighboring states. Yeah,
(04:59):
probably makes sense.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
And honestly, Ben, it was probably a lot like the
moose situation. They weren't booing him, They're saying, ah booo,
it's just his name.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Yeah, Now what you were saying about the city council
members here's one. Kyle Taylor said, this is a town
that's always known as the ones who lost the Cowboys
and lost the Byron Nelson. So he was like for it,
but not everyone was. The crowd booed when he claimed
that SAMs was not a casino centric company but rather
a tourism driver. He pivoted to blame shifting. What about ism?
(05:32):
He said, quote, of course we have casinos, but you
know what, you have sixty five thousand illegal slot machines
in Texas today that no one's doing anything about. That's
his play. The evening goes on and he got sweatier
and more combative. At one point, he accused the audience
of being paid protesters, referencing the Oklahoma casinos, which I
(05:56):
don't think that's true, and the article didn't seem like
that's true. It says, in fact, though SANDS would sponsor supporters,
hiring people to attend the commission meeting and irving three
days later. One recruit was offered two hundred and fifty
dollars in free food, and there's text messages they have
is as a reminder you're there as a citizen, not
on behalf of Echo Canyon Consulting, which is owned by Sands. Gotcha.
(06:19):
So Sands was paying people to go and support it,
which this probably happy happens everywhere when there's like lobbyist involved. Yes,
I would imagine does that be illegal? I think it
probably probably should. How you're supposed to get get to
anything like fake support of fake booing. A boot said
(06:39):
they had to be escorted out by the police every night,
and it got bizarre and weird and it crossed the
lines of decency. Others had a different takeaway. One person
in Irving called it a total disaster. This is a
twenty five year old city councilman, twenty five years old
guy named Luis. He said for his side, he said
it was amazing, It was a lot of fun. But
he said by the end of it that people were
(07:01):
clapping in support of not supporting gambling. Right, they were
clapping to not support it, no, like we don't want it,
because they were like enjoying that. It was a big
riled up thing. Now, when we get back from a
quick song, I'm going to tell you about a wild history.
Did y'all know that there was a wild thing in
Irving happening with prostitution and gambling and it's now underground.
(07:24):
I'll tell you about it in a minute. So we're discussing,
you know, how this gambling in Texas could be legalized,
but how it's kind of lost stem over the past
few months. And some of those are from those meetings
that happened in Irving. And another thing that happened there
was a representative from Plano, a guy with the name
of Matt Shaheen, and he publicly swore to kill gambling
because it he said that it links casinos to sex trafficking,
(07:47):
which he's just being performative politics. It's what he's doing. Well,
then the Addlelsons step in with the Political Action Committee,
and then they started doing a bunch of ads in
his district, you know, saying that he was a moderate
who voted against a munch good jobs and that frustrated
the Republicans a little bit. So even though Miriam Maddilson
is donating a lot of money, in fact more to
(08:10):
Trump and Governor Abbott, she's also like one by one,
like the company as a whole has a lot of
political action committees who were dropping in money to run
ads against guys who are trying to stop gambling. From
going through it's highly interesting. But then there's a story
in this This article kind of goes into the middle.
(08:31):
It talks about this thing that happened in Irving. I
did not know this, and I was just amazed. So
there's a place in the nineteen thirties and forties called
top O Hill Terrace, right, Okay, yes, I'm telling you guys.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Like the best thing about that book is that it's
just a history of how politics, money, and organized crime
have been in this community and built it up since
what like the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Yeh, basically twenty thirties. It's a great book. Yeah. So
Tapahoo Terras an illegal home for gambling, booze in prostitution,
Vegas before Vegas. Some called it. Bonnie and Clyde went there,
Howard Hughes. What you have to realize, though, is think
about this.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
So when Ben and I were in high school, this
is what's so weird about where we live now.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Ben and I grew up in Richardson.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
When we grew up, when we graduated in eighty nine,
Frisco was nothing but farmland. Like, think about what Frisco
is now. Six It was nothing but farmland yea, And
actually like McKinney, which is one giant strip mall now
same thing. Nothing like half of Plano was still farmland.
Now all that's been developed. So when you talk about this,
(09:42):
you have to realize there's the urban core of Dallas,
but Irving was the country. Yeah, So you're talking about
going to like a rural area and then out in
the middle of that there would be some sort of
a business that would be the front for it, like
it could be a it could be a restaurant or something,
or a hotel, and it's the front for gambling in prostitution.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
So downstairs at this place a plush room with roulette
card tables, slots, booze, and women for hire. The police
seldom raided, but when they did, they were ready because
they had armed guards in a watch tower and they'd
sound an alarm to alert them if the cops were coming. Yeah,
and then they had basically as the cops were coming
up a hill is a very long driveway too, so
(10:25):
it took time for the cops to get up there.
They could fold up the card tables and things like that,
and then the guests would escape through underground tunnels dug
into the hill.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Pretty great think about that. Everyone leave in the underground tunnel.
The cops are coming.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
So now this casino is buried under a brick building
of Arlington Baptist University. Yeah, which I didn't know Arlington
Baptist University was a thing, but it's underneath that.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
So it's pretty crazy. And think I want you to
think about this too. One hundred years is not that
long ago. This was all within one hundred years of
where we are now pretty much.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
So now we need to talk about a who had
a big impact on where we stand today, because right now,
thirty nine states have legalized wagering on sports. Texas and
California are the biggest states by far who have held out.
New York is already they're in now. Twelve Texas major
League franchises have joined forces with popular apps like badamgm
FanDuel DraftKings, something called the Sports Uh, the Texas Sports
(11:22):
Betting Alliance. All the teams are, the Rangers are in it,
right think about how the Rangers are. The Rangers are
in that. So just as in the old days, it's
not hard to find ways around the law. It's very easy.
You can good on Bravada right now, get an account
if you want. I don't like using it. I had
a bravada kept ten years ago. I don't mess with that.
But you can do it like you can illegally bet
(11:44):
if you want to. So that's a pretty good point.
There's been doing survey in the university from the University
of Houston a couple of years ago. Seventy three percent
of Texans support allowing destination resort casinos. Sixty percent support
legal online betting on sports, and there's no difference of
opinion between Republicans and Democrats. It might be the one
thing that we can all agree on. But there's a
(12:05):
fellow that they talked about in this article, and it
was a guy who was a pastor from the first
Baptist Church in Fort Worth a long time ago, like
nineteen oh nine to nineteen fifty two. And I'm to
tell you in a second like why he's important to
this story. But you need to know that there was
(12:27):
a big day up in Frisco at the Star that happened.
It sounds like recently that didn't see actual date on this.
So all the people that were it was nineteen people
in the house were going there. Dan Patrick, yeah, representatives.
Dan Patrick was there and there was just gonna go
(12:47):
watch the cowboysch practice at training camp. This is yeah,
this is at the end of training camp last year,
twenty twenty four. Right, So Jerry's hosting all these people
and they're all hanging out. But Dan Patrick brought ed Young.
Ed Young is eighty eight. He grew up sorry Houston's
second Baptist church into a juggernaut, eighty thousand members across
(13:08):
six campuses. He had a TV show that was global.
He counseled George W. Bush when he was governor. He
is a big opponent of gambling, and his presence at
that hangout at the Star with Dan Patrick was enough
to scare away a bunch of senators of from voting
for legalizing gambling, because there has been signs even Governor
(13:32):
Abbott has said I think we should look into it,
when in the past he's been like, hey, I'll no,
because he's gotten a lot of money from Miriam Maddelson
over the past couple of years to say things like that,
and they kind of had their hopes of like maybe
this will go through and because Dan Patrick, but they
all talked about him, They're like, he's so savvy. Jerry
(13:52):
Jones is there. Jerry Jones wants gambling in Texas. Right,
of course they're all wooing. They're watching cowboys practicing. But
Ed Young, who's eighty eight, terrified everybody. I don't even
know that Ed Young's still alive now, honestly, I really
don't know that even got to that in the article.
But that was crazy to me. And you know why,
because they just told you he's in control of eighty
(14:13):
thousand voters. Okay, yeah, that's why I was. Because he's rich.
I don't understand.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
No, it's just it's And that's the thing is a
lot of politicians can be swayed by new money. I
really legitimately thought that marijuana and gambling would be legal.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
In the next couple of years.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
But there's also really really strong oil backed money that
let's just call it religious money that keeps that thing
at bay.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
So they said watch the cowich practice got aut aggressed
from some of the players. Drew Pearson let one senator
spouse try on his Super Bowl ring. That's a good
over her wining and dining the original eighty eight. But
there's one big problem. Everything was going according to plan,
which makes me think of Jerry and Miria Maddison probably
have talked before Zero Down, I have talked. Dan Patrick
(15:01):
brought his pastor and that's the one thing. Another thing
it says is at the twenty twenty five sessions, so
this was been a couple months ago, they blanketed the
airwaves with advertising for destination resorts. The word casino never used.
Greg Abbott mentioned that he did not have a problem
with online sports betting, but one lobbyist said in this article,
(15:23):
sans's biggest problem is they have Las Vegas bully mentality.
They think they can money whip everybody down here into submission,
and it's just not going to be that easy. And
the last session, do you know what came up recently,
the Texas lottery? You know what? All that's about a distraction.
It's a distraction. So no one's talking about legalizing sports
(15:46):
gambling and it's easy to go. We can't even get
our Texas lottery straight. How are we supposed to monetize
this multi billion dollar thing? How are we going to
have that organized? We can't even run the two billion
dollar Texas lottery.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
And isn't it hypocritical to say you can have a
lottery but you can't bet on a hand of black jack,
and that's the exact same things it is there.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
There are games of chance change.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
I mean, it's the And there's a lot of people
that will argue, like the majority of the people that
buy lottery tickets are people that can't afford it because
they it's hope. It represents hope for them. There's a
lot of people that gamble that it represents hope for them.
And so the whole, the whole idea of all of this,
and again you're you're talking about you're talking about who
has the biggest dollar, and so the idea that Vegas
(16:31):
comes in here and thinks they can money whip everybody,
they don't got the oil money. Texas was built on
oil money. And especially if you look at these smaller
rural communities where families became billionaires, almost all of them
represent like old traditional Christian values. Like I'm not even
talking about new or modern Christian values. I'm talking about
(16:54):
old style Bible study. And that is a very different meantality,
especially here in Texas. Then what a lot of what
I would just call your average Christian is pretty moderate
in the way they view the world.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
The last paragraph of the article said, many capital insiders
agree that the gambling cause has been set back years,
perhaps a decade or more. Oh wow, really that's a
bleak outlook for the Sands company. But they see it
another way. It means that legalization is just a matter
of time. It is. I thought we might be imminent
when they bought the team, and after reading that article,
(17:31):
I'm very clearly like it's gonna be way past twenty thirty.
It's gonna take it forever to get this past. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
I mean they've shifted their focus again. They're building the
resort no matter what. Yeah, they want the infrastructure. But
here's the other thing. The old guard it do die.
It absolutely do die. That's so interesting, man. And that's
the cover story of the New Texas Monthly.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Yeah, did July cover story heard here for the first
time ever. A nice setse. That's an amazing report you
to report on that report. I think I should get
my maroney. Ward what is it called? What do they
give macaroni? Uh? Coming up next?
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Before we get to this, I'll never forget the time
that Kevin looked Edward R.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Murrow dead in his eye and.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
He said to him, DM me for socks and panty purchases.
Oh no, and then he lost his reporting license. Christina
is going to stick around and play some music right
here on the Eagle.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Here you going, well, I'm gonna get my sock back, Dudemer,
that's your answer,
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