On Capitol Hill, reporters know how to find Texas Republican Troy Nehls.
After the House of Representatives finishes a vote, Nehls usually leaves the chamber and hurries toward the Capitol steps. Instead of walking straight down the stairs toward his office across the street, Nehls will veer toward the base of one of the building’s grand Corinthian columns. That’s where the Texas congressman then picks up his half-smoked cigar—still smoldering—right where he stashed it.
For reporters lying in wait, it’s worth enduring the second-hand smoke as Nehls takes a puff; he’s more than likely to say something outrageous, offensive, or newsmaking—frequently all at once.
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The MAGA diehard could, for instance, nominate former President Donald Trump for Speaker of the House.
Or Nehls might admit he won’t back a bipartisan border security bill, at least, in part, because he’s “not willing to do too damn much right now to help a Democrat and to help Joe Biden’s approval rating.”
Or maybe, when asked about what the House GOP hopes to gain from its impeachment inquiry into President Biden, Nehls will candidly and proudly reply, “Donald J. Trump 2024, baby!”
Or Nehls will call Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO)—who is Black—“loud” and her husband, a “thug.”
Nehls has done all of these things, earning seemingly endless headlines and sparking controversial news cycles.
In the process, the second-term congressman has earned a name for himself. He’s also earned blowback, occasionally from fellow Republicans. To hear him tell it, that’s the idea.
“I didn’t come up here to make friends,” Nehls told The Daily Beast last week in between drags on his cigar—this time seated in a black leather chair in his congressional office.
“Every once in a while, you know, when you’re that junior woodchuck in the room, you try to build a relationship with these guys and try to understand just how this place works,” Nehls—a 55-year-old in his second term—added of senior Republicans.
“Eventually,” Nehls continued, “you formulate your own opinion, and you observe, and you see what’s happening up here. And I don’t like it. I don’t like what’s happening. We put America last and it’s about time we put America first.”
Republicans, Nehls said, need to do better. “We have the gavel. We are the majority,” he argued. “But we don’t act like it.”
For a member of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus—the thorn in the side of House GOP leaders for nearly the last decade—Nehls’ disapproval of the GOP’s performance is unsurprising. His voting record backs up the rhetoric: Heritage Action, the political wing of the prominent right-wing think tank, rates Nehls as slightly more conservative than Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).
In high-profile moments, Nehls’ brash approach hasn’t been well-suited to the subtleties of Capitol politics. After Kevin McCarthy was deposed as Speaker last October, the Texas Republican caused a stir when he got out ahead of Trump in announcing the former president was supporting Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) for the post.
Whatever heartburn there was seems to have dissipated quickly. In January, Trump endorsed Nehls, proclaiming the congressman will “NEVER LET YOU DOWN” on Truth Social.
“Troy’s good. He’s tip-top,” Trump ally Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) told The Daily Beast. “Troy, he’s well-respected in Trumpworld.”
Even by the standards of a House Republican majority that has gleefully discarded norms of decorum and discretion, Nehls is distinct for so often saying the quiet part out loud—boldly acknowledging political calculations reserved for closed-door discussions and slinging insults that others hide behind anonymously.
And even by the standards of a party run by a man who demands nothing less than total allegiance, Nehls’ support for Trump—along with his penchant for attention-grabbing stunts to profess it—is notable.
First elected in 2020, Nehls is a poster child for a new Republican Party that incentivizes its foot soldiers to behave like Trump, and often punishes those who do not. However candid and brazen Nehls may seem, those who have observed him know he understands this calculus.
“Troy Nehls is an extremely good politician,” Sri Kulkarni, Nehls’ Democratic opponent in 2020, told The Daily Beast. “And I don’t mean that necessarily in a good way.”
Originally from Wisconsin, Nehls has spent nearly three decades in law enforcement in Texas, and 21 years in the U.S. Army Reserve. He has three daughters, and calls himself a proud “cheer dad.”
His law enforcement background is checkered. In 1998, he was fired from the Richmond Police Department in Texas after committing 19 violations in one year—including destruction of evidence and improper arrests. As a sheriff he faced scrutiny over two inmate deaths in county jails.
In 2020, when Nehls ran for his southeast Texas congressional seat against Kulkarni, the district was competitive. But he didn’t act like a swing district candidate: the top issue on his campaign website in July 2020 was “Standing with President Trump.”
By that time, Nehls already had MAGA bona fides. As Fort Bend County sheriff in 2017, Nehls hunted down a truck with a bumper sticker that said, “FUCK TRUMP AND FUCK YOU FOR VOTING FOR HIM.” Nehls threatened to charge the truck’s owner with disorderly conduct, sparking a free speech scandal.
In the primary, Nehls was the top candidate in a field that included George H.W. Bush’s grandson. In November, Nehls defeated Kulkarni by seven points.
When Nehls made it to Congress, he was a Trump loyalist, but he was open to working across the aisle. At his first presidential address to Congress in 2021, Nehls cornered the newly inaugurated Biden as he made his way to the speaker’s podium. The backbench Texas Republican then famously offered to help him tackle criminal justice reform.
Since then, redistricting shifted Nehls’ constituency significantly. He was first elected to a seat Trump carried by one point in 2020. In 2022, Nehls ran for a seat that Trump won by 16.
Perhaps nothing tells the story of that shift more vividly than the change in Nehls’ State of the Union demeanor. Last Thursday, when Biden addressed Congress, Nehls stood in the back, showing-off a T-shirt adorned with Trump’s mugshot and the rallying cry “Never Surrender.”
Wearing a blazer and an American flag bow tie around his neck—without a collar—Nehls looked like a MAGA fever dream come to life. He appeared ready to pounce at every Biden slip-up.
But Nehls admitted to The Daily Beast ahead of the address that he was “hoping and praying that he gives a coherent speech”—just not out of any goodwill to the president.
“I hope that Jill put him in bed early and gave him a nap this afternoon. I really need him to deliver a good solid speech tonight,” Nehls said. “Make sure the letters on that teleprompter are just nice and slow. Make sure your eyes are wide open so you can read every word and don’t stumble and fumble, because I need Joe Biden to be their nominee.”
“He needs to be the nominee because Donald Trump will beat him for a second time,” he continued, parroting the baseless conspiracy that Trump won the 2020 election.
Nehls has more firsthand familiarity with the effect of those lies than most people. Standing in the House chamber on Thursday night wearing Trump’s mugshot, Nehls was just feet away from rioters on Jan. 6 when he confronted them through the same doorway Biden walked out of Thursday night. The rioters stood on the other side, after punching out the glass, trying to get into the chamber.
Photos from that day—just Nehls’ third day on the job—show him in a bright blue shirt crouched by the shattered window. He’s shoulder-to-shoulder with Capitol Police staring at the mob through the broken glass. The Justice Department released video of Nehls admonishing the insurrectionists.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” he said.
That day, he posted a stark message on social media: “What I’m witnessing is a disgrace. We’re better than this. Violence is NEVER the answer.”
Staunchly pro-Trump Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) remembered Nehls’ defense of the House. When asked about Nehls, Burchett swiped through photos on his iPhone of the two that day.
“He was there for the fight, and we weren’t gonna leave,” Burchett said. “And he didn’t. And he stayed and he was a calm headed guy.”
But for Nehls, Jan. 6 ended on Jan. 6. When the House convened later that day, just hours after marauders overtook the Capitol, Nehls voted to throw out Electoral College votes that sealed Biden’s win. He fiercely opposed Trump’s impeachment over inciting the insurrection—and he now maintains that Jan. 6 wasn’t an insurrection at all.
While he made clear that he condemns anyone who broke windows or hurt Capitol Police, Nehls told The Daily Beast that if those who entered the Capitol wanted to stage a coup, they would have caused more harm.
“If you wanted to really overthrow the government and cause an insurrection, they could have taken the flags,” he said. “They could have punched holes in the paintings. They could have taken the statutes—every state gets two statues—they could have taken them, dumped them all. They could have busted everything.”
When presented with the facts that the Capitol Building was, in fact, trashed on Jan. 6, and that rioters sought out then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) in her office, Nehls doubled down. Hundreds of people, he said, “didn’t touch a damn thing.”
“There was not a member of Congress that was assaulted or hurt,” he said, omitting that many rioters came in hopes of doing just that.
Nehls’ perspective on Jan. 6 has become canon for MAGA true believers. In 2022, he wrote a book titled: The Big Fraud: What Democrats Don’t Want You to Know about January 6, the 2020 Election, and a Whole Lot Else.
Trump congratulated Nehls on the book, saying the lawmaker “only speaks the TRUTH.”
With Trump in his corner, the rest of the MAGA contingent in Congress—which is most of the Republican party—has adopted the Nehls worldview. It’s hard to find any Republican complaining about Nehls publicly.
Fellow Texas Republican, Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington, called Nehls a “rock-ribbed conservative.”
“He’s probably as effective of a communicator as anybody in our delegation,” Arrington told The Daily Beast.
But a man so embraced by the Republican Party is bound to be hated by Democrats. Nehls represents everything they loathe about the GOP under Trump.
One recent incident in particular crystallizes why. After the Department of Justice opened an investigation into security payments Bush, the Missouri congresswoman, made to her husband Cortney Merrits, Nehls called her “loud,” and him a “thug.”
Bush condemned the language as “racist.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) called it “shameful.” The Congressional Black Caucus called the comments “unbecoming.”
Pressed about his language, Nehls was unmoved. “Whatever,” he said. “I called him a ‘thug.’ It is what it is.”
During his interview with The Daily Beast, Nehls used the same language again. He called George Floyd—who was murdered in 2020 by police kneeling on his neck—“that criminal, that thug.”
But Nehls, carrying on Trump’s tradition, doesn’t care about offending; he seems to relish in it.
He isn’t worried about being a bully. And whether it comes to perceptions of him or Trump, Nehls doesn’t think the public should either.
“The headline should be: America, we are not electing the Pope. We’re electing the president,” he said. “Try to keep the emotion out of it.”
