Speaker 1: Pushkin, this is talk easy. I'm standing Forgoso. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. For more than two years, Governor Greg Abbot
Speaker 1: has taken an increasingly hostile approach to defending the Texas
Speaker 1: Mexico border. But this summer, Abbot somehow has gone a
Speaker 1: step further. According to interviews with state officials and documents
Speaker 1: reviewed by The New York Times, Texas law enforcement line
Speaker 1: the river banks with razor wire, denied water to migrants,
Speaker 1: and in some cases intentionally refused to alert federal border
Speaker 1: agents who might assist arriving groups seeking asylum. Now, this treatment,
Speaker 1: while unquestionably abhorrent, is not exactly new. Growing up as
Speaker 1: a second generation Mexican American in Chicago, I'd often hear
Speaker 1: stories about what my grandfather faced as he left Mexico
Speaker 1: for America. In fact, a couple years back, I made
Speaker 1: a short film about him called Sebastian, and in that
Speaker 1: it told the story in part of his journey through
Speaker 1: America in the nineteen fifties and even then, the brutality,
Speaker 1: the discrimination, the fears some had that he was here
Speaker 1: to take their job. It was all part and parcel
Speaker 1: of the immigrant experience. And so today I wanted to
Speaker 1: have a different kind of conversation about what's happening down
Speaker 1: in Texas. And to do that, I thought we should
Speaker 1: call up one of our most beloved recurring guests on
Speaker 1: Talk Easy. Of course, I am talking about my father.
Speaker 1: Just give him a call back, by popular demand, my father, Dad,
Speaker 1: welcome back.
Speaker 2: Hey, let's see who's sweeting me? Is it?
Speaker 1: I think?
Speaker 2: Come?
Speaker 1: Ou may have you beat Doctor Jaw came on a lot.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: To be fair, doctor Jaw stop returning my emails once
Speaker 1: the Biden administration hired him, So I appreciate you haven't
Speaker 1: You haven't done that. What does a teacher do on
Speaker 1: summer vacation right now? You're usually teaching middle schoolers. You
Speaker 1: have these couple months off. Are you okay? Are you
Speaker 1: getting by? Do you miss them?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: No, I do really because that silence felt like you
Speaker 1: really didn't miss them.
Speaker 2: Well, because I'm going back in about a week. But honestly,
Speaker 2: I mean, I decided to do this, and I really
Speaker 2: wanted to do it. Here now that I'm thinking about it,
Speaker 2: I'm sitting on my mom's couch and all summer, for
Speaker 2: the most part, I've been taking care of her, and
Speaker 2: I'm sitting on the couch where she sits for hours,
Speaker 2: watching her masses and watching and doing her rosaries and
Speaker 2: all that. And I'm trying to feel my surroundings. And
Speaker 2: then she has like twenty thousand photos around here, photos
Speaker 2: of you when you were little. And then we're going
Speaker 2: to talk about this situation about immigration, and I think
Speaker 2: about all these people who want to have this and
Speaker 2: how unfair this is. It's just odd.
Speaker 1: It's funny because I wanted to call you up because
Speaker 1: obviously what's been happening down in Texas where there's been
Speaker 1: this humanitarian crisis as more and more people try to
Speaker 1: get across the border separating Mexico and Texas. As I'm
Speaker 1: looking at you right now, you're enveloped by a bunch
Speaker 1: of photos of my grandmother, your mother, who is ninety
Speaker 1: seven and sick but still ninety seven in here, and
Speaker 1: of course in most of the photos that I'm looking at,
Speaker 1: it's of her and my grandfather Sebastian.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so with all of that, given that this is
Speaker 1: such a personal issue, a familial issue, when you look
Speaker 1: at what's happening right now down in Texas, how are
Speaker 1: you holding all of it?
Speaker 2: What's it's fear mongering, and what the Orange Buffoon created
Speaker 2: was this fear that these people crossing their border were
Speaker 2: these you know as you call them, and I'm not
Speaker 2: going to go into the names because they're ridiculous, but
Speaker 2: the majority of the people coming here are here to
Speaker 2: find that whatever they want to call American treem. You know,
Speaker 2: your uncle Kwan is an engineer. Your auntie Bertha was
Speaker 2: a manager of a bank. You know your auntie Rosa,
Speaker 2: she had an amazing job at Come with Edison, with
Speaker 2: a great pension, and she's happy. And they all found
Speaker 2: partners for life. And my father gave up everything. And unfortunately,
Speaker 2: the way we're being perceived and the lies and the
Speaker 2: false truths of whatever media source that these white people
Speaker 2: want to get into are taking over their lives. So
Speaker 2: people are afraid of the unknown. You can call it racism,
Speaker 2: you can call it whatever. I mean. It's just it's pathetic.
Speaker 2: It is what it is.
Speaker 1: The way you're framing our family's story, that we all
Speaker 1: came here, that we made a better life for ourselves,
Speaker 1: that we got married, we had jobs with pensions, it
Speaker 1: sounds like a fairy tale. And it's odd to me
Speaker 1: because I've never heard you describe the journey in such
Speaker 1: picturesque terms. Are you doing that because we're on a
Speaker 1: podcast right now.
Speaker 2: No, No, it's about opportunity. So we had an opportunity.
Speaker 2: The opportunities didn't just come and fall into our laps.
Speaker 2: They came with crazy amounts of work and always thinking
Speaker 2: or saying that we are equal, or we are the same,
Speaker 2: or we are capable, always proving ourselves more. My sisters
Speaker 2: would speak a little bit of Spanish or in school
Speaker 2: and they would get hit. So the journey, yeah, I
Speaker 2: clossed right over it. But that we hit a bunch
Speaker 2: of bumps, yeah, and then we ran them over and
Speaker 2: then we just kept going. And that's all all these
Speaker 2: people want is just give me a chance. I'm going
Speaker 2: to prove myself. You can't just bitch and moan about
Speaker 2: what this country didn't give to you. We can only
Speaker 2: look at what's there and what can we take, And
Speaker 2: we're not taking it from nobody because nobody wanted to
Speaker 2: drive a forklift for twenty five thirty years. Nobody wants
Speaker 2: to do that shit, and yet my dad did. And
Speaker 2: then from there, I can do better, and that's what
Speaker 2: you need to do. And my brother did better. And
Speaker 2: that's what he needed to do and everybody else and
Speaker 2: all these people are coming over. Be honest with you,
Speaker 2: they're coming over in a harsher manner than my dad did.
Speaker 2: I mean, yes, he was caught a couple of times,
Speaker 2: he was thrown back, he was marked and shaved head
Speaker 2: and did all these things. And I'm sure he went
Speaker 2: through a lot of racism, but he wouldn't talk about it.
Speaker 2: It's almost like a World War Two veteran who doesn't
Speaker 2: want to talk about the war. He'd have stories, but
Speaker 2: there were always lighthearted. He didn't want to get into
Speaker 2: living in a box in Baker's Field. He didn't want
Speaker 2: to get into that. But you know, I can see
Speaker 2: why that would be painful for him and why it
Speaker 2: was painful for him. But you know, these people coming
Speaker 2: over who are just being I think bullying and harassed
Speaker 2: and just abused on the other side of Mexico. Some
Speaker 2: of them are falling into traps of taking drugs on
Speaker 2: the other side, or we're going to kill your family.
Speaker 2: There's so many stories, and so their desperation is being shown.
Speaker 2: And that joke of a governor in Texas is that
Speaker 2: he's just trying to get votes that's all it is.
Speaker 1: And I think that's key because these people that are
Speaker 1: coming from all over.
Speaker 2: Central America, South America, from Mexico.
Speaker 1: And from all those places, they're often leaving even more
Speaker 1: dire conditions. They're fleeing political upheaval, all kinds of violence, yep,
Speaker 1: and now come here as their last resort. And to
Speaker 1: then be treated the way they are being treated, it
Speaker 1: is almost unfathomable. And yet it is happening, and it
Speaker 1: is happening in large part because of policies created and
Speaker 1: carried out by Governor Greg Abbott. And so I think
Speaker 1: with that, we should talk to someone who challenged Governor
Speaker 1: Abbot in the last election this past November, and someone
Speaker 1: who's been outspoken about why and how we can do
Speaker 1: better in this moment. What do you think about that?
Speaker 1: We should I make a call? Who do you have
Speaker 1: Auntie Rosa? Should we call her up?
Speaker 2: For sure? Let's do it. Boy, she's gonna have a
Speaker 2: hell over.
Speaker 1: Imagine I call her up. She's got like three pages
Speaker 1: ready to go against Abbot. No, we're gonna call an
Speaker 1: old in front of the show, someone who has been
Speaker 1: on before, but not as many times as you. Let's
Speaker 1: call up the former congressman of Texas, the author of
Speaker 1: the new book We've Got to Try in a recent
Speaker 1: gubernatorial candidate for the state.
Speaker 2: Of Texas better. I like that guy.
Speaker 1: I like him too. I'll make sure to share the message.
Speaker 1: I'll call you back in a little bit, cool Betto.
Speaker 1: It's good to see you.
Speaker 3: It's good to see you. It's been a little while.
Speaker 1: I think we last spoke back in April of twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: right around when the pandemic began. To say that you've
Speaker 1: been busy these past few years feels like a colossal understatement.
Speaker 1: You ran for governor, you wrote a book, You did
Speaker 1: a little teaching at the University of Chicago, which all
Speaker 1: of us Chicagoans were very excited about. Before we dive
Speaker 1: into the bigger stuff, how the hell are you doing.
Speaker 3: I was thinking about this, not because I anticipated the
Speaker 3: question from you, but I've just had a great string
Speaker 3: of days and weeks and probably months, and I feel
Speaker 3: incredibly lucky. You know, our kids all started school on Monday,
Speaker 3: and they're all just in this terrific place. Our oldest
Speaker 3: is sixteen, our youngest is twelve, our middle child, our
Speaker 3: daughters fifteen. They are becoming who they will be and
Speaker 3: we can see that, and it's fucking awesome. They're just
Speaker 3: amazing people. Not that they don't have problems, because everyone does,
Speaker 3: but man, we've lucked out there. And my mom, who
Speaker 3: since you and I last talked, found that she had cancer,
Speaker 3: and a serious cancer in different parts of her body,
Speaker 3: including in her liver, and she just got, you know,
Speaker 3: a blood and body scam and yesterday met with her
Speaker 3: oncologist and these two lesions in her liver are shrinking,
Speaker 3: which is beyond what we could have hoped for, and
Speaker 3: the cancer and other parts of her body has stabilized
Speaker 3: and maybe in some places even begun to recede. We
Speaker 3: don't know. And the doctor was really clear about this.
Speaker 3: This may or may not hold. The next three months
Speaker 3: will be very telling. But I got that news yesterday, Sam,
Speaker 3: I've just been on this high. So the stuff that
Speaker 3: matters most we can talk about the governor's race and
Speaker 3: other things that are important and truly do matter and
Speaker 3: matter to a lot of us, but personally in my life,
Speaker 3: the things that really matter most to me my family,
Speaker 3: my wife, our kids, my mom, my sister. We're doing
Speaker 3: really good. Well.
Speaker 1: I think we're going to have to try to carry
Speaker 1: that positivity and optimism as we work through in the
Speaker 1: next hour. What you've professionally been talking about actually throughout
Speaker 1: the summer, you know, you spend a whole lot of
Speaker 1: time raising awareness for what you've called a humanitarian crisis
Speaker 1: at the border. For context, Dexter Filkins at The New
Speaker 1: Yorker writes that in the past two years, millions of migrants,
Speaker 1: spurred by political and economic turmoil in their home countries
Speaker 1: and by President Joe Biden's welcome stance, have come to
Speaker 1: the southern border and crossed into the United States. Though
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands have been denied entry, hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: more from countries as far away as China and Tajikistan
Speaker 1: have made their way in, often by claiming that they
Speaker 1: will face persecution or violence if they return home. As
Speaker 1: a resident of a border town like El Paso, and
Speaker 1: as someone who has spent a lot of time these
Speaker 1: past five years across Texas at these ports of entry,
Speaker 1: what have you seen this summer that has made you
Speaker 1: call this moment a humanitarian crisis? What's different about right now?
Speaker 3: The level of barbarism that we are seeing at the
Speaker 3: Texas Mexico border, the absolute inhumanity, This disgusting way that
Speaker 3: we are treating our fellow human beings is shocking to me.
Speaker 3: Right now, in the Rio Grande River outside of Eagle Pass, Texas,
Speaker 3: it's a really small town in Maverick County in South Texas,
Speaker 3: across the river from Piedras Negraas the Governor of Texas,
Speaker 3: Greg Abbott, has deployed this floating wall. It's a barrier
Speaker 3: comprised of large orange buoys that are strung together with
Speaker 3: netting below the surface of the river, and in between
Speaker 3: each buoy is literally a saw blade, like the serrated
Speaker 3: edged disc, so that if you were to try to
Speaker 3: grab onto it, you'd slice your hand open. It is medieval.
Speaker 3: It's something you might expect in like a Mad Max
Speaker 3: movie or a apocalyptic TV show, and you see that
Speaker 3: and you're like, well, shit, I can't believe that anybody
Speaker 3: would do that to anybody, and yet we're doing that
Speaker 3: to people right now. And in that part of the
Speaker 3: Rio Grande River that joins the United States and Mexico
Speaker 3: that we know of so far, twenty eight people have
Speaker 3: died just in this one little section, and over the
Speaker 3: last week they recovered two bodies, including of a child
Speaker 3: that were caught up in this booy barrier. I spoke
Speaker 3: to a member of the Texas Guard who has been
Speaker 3: deployed down there yesterday, and he talked about coming upon
Speaker 3: a woman who had one hand on this Concertina razor
Speaker 3: wire on the shore to pull herself out of the water,
Speaker 3: her other hand holding her little daughter, to try to
Speaker 3: pull her out of the river. As this is happening,
Speaker 3: Department of Public Safety troopers, that's our state police in
Speaker 3: Texas are yelling at the woman and this guardsman to
Speaker 3: get back in the water. And there are substantiated cases
Speaker 3: of children and moms and being pushed into this river
Speaker 3: in one hundred, one hundred and five hundred and ten
Speaker 3: degree heat. So you've got this governor who has almost
Speaker 3: mastered the art of cruelty here in Texas, and you
Speaker 3: might throw up your hands and I know we'll get
Speaker 3: into the governor's race that took place last year, and
Speaker 3: you say, you know what, we were unable to defeat
Speaker 3: him at the polls. This is our future for the
Speaker 3: next four years. The thing is, we know that there
Speaker 3: is a higher power in this country, and that's the
Speaker 3: president who, through the Constitution and US law literally has
Speaker 3: jurisdiction and purview over the border, over immigration law, over
Speaker 3: the river, and over our connection with Mexico. And what
Speaker 3: I hope that we are going to do as a
Speaker 3: country is push Joe Biden literally give him the power
Speaker 3: to do the right thing and intervene before we lose
Speaker 3: any more lives unnecessarily. And that's the crux of it.
Speaker 3: That kids, that moms, that people are dying right now unnecessarily,
Speaker 3: and they're dying to come here to do better for
Speaker 3: themselves and their kids, for sure, but also to do
Speaker 3: better for all of us. And I know that's a
Speaker 3: story you have told about your family. It's why you
Speaker 3: are here in the United States right now, and it's
Speaker 3: a story of tens of millions of our fellow Americans.
Speaker 3: We are people from the world over who have chosen
Speaker 3: or who have been brought here in some cases against
Speaker 3: their will, but by their very presence made us a better, stronger,
Speaker 3: safer place. And we are not just ignoring that history
Speaker 3: right now, we are literally trying to go backwards against
Speaker 3: it and losing the essence of what makes us so special.
Speaker 1: Well, I want to talk about what President Biden can
Speaker 1: and what I think you and I both believe he
Speaker 1: should do. But before we do that, you mentioned these
Speaker 1: troopers down at the border. The director for the Texas
Speaker 1: Department of Public Safety, Steve McCraw, responded to some of
Speaker 1: what you just alleged, and he said, the purpose of
Speaker 1: the wire that you talked about is to deter smuggling
Speaker 1: betwey in ports of entry and not to injure migrants.
Speaker 1: He said, the smugglers care not if the migrants are injured,
Speaker 1: but we do. So on that side, you have someone
Speaker 1: like McCraw and a whole bunch of people from the
Speaker 1: Texas Department of Public Safety saying the wires not to
Speaker 1: hurt people, that we care about the migrants and the
Speaker 1: cartel does not, that we are actually trying to be helpful.
Speaker 1: What do you say to that.
Speaker 3: I don't know another way to put it other than
Speaker 3: this guy is so full of shit, and not just
Speaker 3: on this because one of his own troopers has blown
Speaker 3: the whistle to describe everything that I'm sharing with you
Speaker 3: right now, and then it's been substantiated by other troopers
Speaker 3: who work under him. But this is the same guy
Speaker 3: who had dozens of troopers outside of rob Elementary in Uvalde, Texas,
Speaker 3: May twenty fourth last year, for more than seventy seven minutes,
Speaker 3: when an eighteen year old man was inside of a
Speaker 3: classroom with an ar fifteen hundreds of rounds of ammunition
Speaker 3: and was free to kill, destroy the lives of nineteen
Speaker 3: children and to teachers seventy seven minutes before those DPS
Speaker 3: troopers who were fully armed themselves and literally that is
Speaker 3: the job they signed up for while they waited outside.
Speaker 3: And since then it's been more than a year, we
Speaker 3: have yet to get the facts, the truth, answers, and
Speaker 3: accountability from Steve mccroff, from the Texas Department of Public Safety,
Speaker 3: from the governor of the state of Texas. So in
Speaker 3: my opinion and certainly for the people in Ubility and
Speaker 3: throughout much of the rest of Texas, this guy has
Speaker 3: zero credibility right now. And the other thing is he
Speaker 3: and Greg Abbott both have acknowledged that this barrier that
Speaker 3: they've put up and the concertina wire, that's not just
Speaker 3: on the shores, it's literally wrapped around barrels and submerged
Speaker 3: under water, so that as you try to cross, you
Speaker 3: will become entangled, ensnared, cut up, and very possibly drown
Speaker 3: when confronted with that, they're like, yeah, you're right, but maybe,
Speaker 3: just maybe this will deter people from making the journey
Speaker 3: in the first place. So they concede that this is
Speaker 3: likely to kill, to maim, to injure, and to produce suffering,
Speaker 3: But they say that is worthwhile as long as we're
Speaker 3: providing a deterrent for people to cross in the first place.
Speaker 3: That is what is just so galling. But it's going
Speaker 3: to take us doing everything we can to persuade President
Speaker 3: Biden that this is not just the right thing to do,
Speaker 3: but the right thing to do that will not compromise
Speaker 3: or cost him the election or political power to do
Speaker 3: other important things. And I feel like I can make
Speaker 3: that case.
Speaker 1: Everything you've described has come under what has been called
Speaker 1: the Operation Loan Star that began in the summer of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one as Texas saw a historic upswing of
Speaker 1: illegal border crossings. Now Texas legally cannot enforce federal immigration law,
Speaker 1: but Abbott, in turn has imposed misdemeanor charges on people
Speaker 1: for crossing the private property of ranchers along the border
Speaker 1: who choose to participate in his program. Some of them
Speaker 1: have not chosen to participate, but the fact of this
Speaker 1: operation is that they have already spent four point five
Speaker 1: billion dollars in the first two years. Your state has
Speaker 1: already committed another five point one billion dollars through twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five, costing taxpayers of Texas roughly two point five
Speaker 1: million dollars a week. But that brings us to, you know,
Speaker 1: the taxpayers themselves, four point four million, of whom voted
Speaker 1: for Governor Abbott in this last year's election as you
Speaker 1: attempted to unseat him. Now, this is a man who
Speaker 1: you've called a thug, a murderer, and a ghoul before
Speaker 1: I go on, Now that I have you here, do
Speaker 1: you want to tell me how you really feel about him?
Speaker 3: You know, the facts speak for themselves in this case.
Speaker 3: And to maybe open the aperture a little bit wider.
Speaker 3: We've described what's happening at the border, but Sam, we
Speaker 3: also lead much of the developed world in the rate
Speaker 3: of maternal mortality. It's three times as deadly in Texas
Speaker 3: for a black woman, in fact, to give birth or
Speaker 3: to be pregnant. And it has a lot to do
Speaker 3: with the most restrictive reproductive healthcare ban in the United
Speaker 3: States of America, that is Greg Abbott. And then two
Speaker 3: years ago, we had a major winter storm in Texas,
Speaker 3: and because the governor had allied with the energy producers,
Speaker 3: the pipeline companies, the billionaire CEOs who run the energy
Speaker 3: operations of this state and not the people of Texas,
Speaker 3: and didn't weather rise and prepare that grid. Seven hundred
Speaker 3: people died in this state, many of them literally freezing
Speaker 3: to death in their home. So, you know, sometimes politicians
Speaker 3: will traffic in hyperbole or will speak in charge terms
Speaker 3: to try to get your attention. In my opinion, this
Speaker 3: is an accurate description of who this guy is and
Speaker 3: what he has done. But your very good question is, well,
Speaker 3: why in the hell did people vote for him and
Speaker 3: why is he the governor once again in Texas? And
Speaker 3: you know that answer is little complicated. Part of the
Speaker 3: answer is that we are the most challenged state in
Speaker 3: the nation when it comes to voting. So it's harder
Speaker 3: to cast a ballot or to register to vote in
Speaker 3: Texas than it is anywhere else in the nation. And
Speaker 3: those attacks on voting rights are most often focused on
Speaker 3: black voters, Latino voters, young voters, the very old, and
Speaker 3: increasingly the disabled in the state of Texas. So that's
Speaker 3: part of it. Republicans have held a monopoly on political
Speaker 3: power for three decades. Ann Richards was elected governor nineteen ninety.
Speaker 3: She was one of the greatest governors we've ever had,
Speaker 3: but was the last Democrat ever elected to that position,
Speaker 3: And since then, Republicans have had a stranglehold on power
Speaker 3: and the privilege that it affords, from partisan and racial
Speaker 3: gerrymandering and redistricting to the election laws that effectively disenfranchise
Speaker 3: and freeze out such a large part of the electorate.
Speaker 3: So every bad thing that I just described is reflective
Speaker 3: of Greg Abbott and people in power, not necessarily the
Speaker 3: people of this state, because they don't look like the
Speaker 3: electorate that we have right now. So my mission, and
Speaker 3: it's been this for a long time, is to do
Speaker 3: what I can through voter registration and voter engagement to
Speaker 3: make sure that those two are the same that the
Speaker 3: people of Texas look like and act like the electorate
Speaker 3: of Texas, and right now, those are two different groups
Speaker 3: of people that have produced the outcomes that I that
Speaker 3: I've just described.
Speaker 1: In the state of Texas, there were seventeen million plus
Speaker 1: voters registered. There's almost about twenty two million that are eligible.
Speaker 1: But you got seventeen million. Of those seventeen million, eight
Speaker 1: million turned out, the turnout rate effectively being forty five percent.
Speaker 1: But I want to narrow in on what was a
Speaker 1: chief concern in this past election and what it means now,
Speaker 1: which is border security, because you have said in a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of recent interviews that Abbott has blood on
Speaker 1: his hands, but many on the right, including former chair
Speaker 1: of the Republican Party of Texas Matt Ronaldi, claim Abbot
Speaker 1: won the election because of not in spite of his
Speaker 1: policy on the border. Voters across the Texas An exit
Speaker 1: poll after exit pole repeatedly emphasized that the migrant crisis
Speaker 1: was the most important issue to them. And so if
Speaker 1: Abbot was imbued with this governing mandate, why then do
Speaker 1: you squarely put the blame and the blood on his hands.
Speaker 3: This is such an excellent question because it's a tough
Speaker 3: one and it's a hard answer to give. But the
Speaker 3: responsibility is all of ours, right, and the accountability comes
Speaker 3: home not just to the governor who is taking these actions,
Speaker 3: but the people who've enabled him to do that, and
Speaker 3: those of us on the other side of this who'd
Speaker 3: been unsuccessful in making the case or overcoming the challenges
Speaker 3: of voter suppression and voter intimidation everything else that I
Speaker 3: laid out earlier. You know, you wonder over the course
Speaker 3: of human history and even modern human history, how some
Speaker 3: otherwise modern enlightened states could condition their people to hate
Speaker 3: some group based on religion, or ethnicity or immigration status.
Speaker 3: And I think that same question is very relevant today
Speaker 3: in America and in Texas, when you have four years
Speaker 3: of Donald Trump talking about Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals,
Speaker 3: describing them as animals, as an infestation, and warning of
Speaker 3: an invasion, and those are all words that President Trump used.
Speaker 3: Greg Abbott, our current governor, traffics in that same language
Speaker 3: of invasion and people coming to kill us and to
Speaker 3: rape us and to do terrible, terrible things to us.
Speaker 3: And so look, you I those perhaps listening to this
Speaker 3: may have the luxury of doing and their homework on
Speaker 3: this or reading deeply. Others are working too many jobs,
Speaker 3: have too much going on, or for whatever reason, have
Speaker 3: one source of information and news, and that might be
Speaker 3: Donald trumpet maybe Greg Abbott. It may be filtered through
Speaker 3: Newsmax or Fox or some other medium like Twitter. It
Speaker 3: was a perfect foil for Abbot. If we questioned him
Speaker 3: on why nothing had been done in the months following
Speaker 3: the mass shooting and uvality in a state that leads
Speaker 3: the country in the number of school shootings, he would
Speaker 3: point to the border and say, watch out for those Mexicans.
Speaker 3: If we said, what are you going to do about
Speaker 3: the outflight of talent from public schools in Texas and
Speaker 3: our poor performance against public schools and almost every other
Speaker 3: state in the Union, he could point to the border
Speaker 3: and warn of invasion and Sam that is such an
Speaker 3: emotionally resonant issue. It scares the shit out of people
Speaker 3: because they've been conditioned to be afraid of folks who
Speaker 3: are brown, who are coming from another country, who speak
Speaker 3: a different language, who because of the failure at a
Speaker 3: presidential level for as many presidents as I can think
Speaker 3: of in my adult life, we don't have an immigration
Speaker 3: system that allows them to come here safely, legally, in
Speaker 3: an orderly fashion, and they are effectively functionally forced into
Speaker 3: crossing through that river in between the ports of entry,
Speaker 3: just the very side of which can send shivers down
Speaker 3: the spines of some who've been warned about these people
Speaker 3: coming to get us. So, I mean, that's a long
Speaker 3: answer to a tough question, But I think it's pretty
Speaker 3: close to the truth of the explanation for how someone
Speaker 3: doing this horrible stuff to our fellow human beings is
Speaker 3: able to win political power in Texas.
Speaker 1: I want to unpack a few different moments of what
Speaker 1: you just said, and in part because I think it
Speaker 1: explains how we got here. You just said that every
Speaker 1: president has and in some ways failed to deliver comprehensive,
Speaker 1: sensible immigration reform. Now, this is something that Biden talked
Speaker 1: a lot about on the campaign trail back and tw
Speaker 1: It's something most Democrats running for president, including yourself, talks
Speaker 1: about when they're running for president. But legislation actually hasn't
Speaker 1: been a focus in Washington since the summer of twenty thirteen. This,
Speaker 1: of course, came on the heels of Obama's landslide victory
Speaker 1: over Romney, which was delivered in part by Latinos, who
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly voted for him at seventy one percent. Come June,
Speaker 1: the US Senate, led by the Gang of Eight, which
Speaker 1: boasted four Democrats and four Republicans, passed a bipartisan bill
Speaker 1: sixty eight to thirty two, in what Politico called the
Speaker 1: most monumental overhaul of immigration laws in a generation. The
Speaker 1: bill was then kicked back to the House of Representatives,
Speaker 1: which I imagine you remember since it was the same
Speaker 1: year that a young freshman congressman from Texas sixteenth District
Speaker 1: was elected by the good people of El Paso. When
Speaker 1: you look back at that time, how do you make
Speaker 1: sense of what happens next?
Speaker 3: Well, I'd have to go back even further. The last
Speaker 3: time a president was actually successful in doing this was
Speaker 3: in the nineteen eighties, and it was Ronald Reagan nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty six. You might say, look, that was a different time.
Speaker 3: We were a different country, that was a different Republican party.
Speaker 3: All that is probably true, and yet since then, no
Speaker 3: president has been able to or willing to, And I
Speaker 3: think that's an important distinction to marshal the political capital
Speaker 3: and power necessary to get this done, because it's not easy,
Speaker 3: it's not broadly popular. And in President Obama's case, he
Speaker 3: chose instead of doing this to focus on healthcare in
Speaker 3: two thousand and nine, but that essentially was the choice,
Speaker 3: and he knew it was going to take everything he had.
Speaker 3: Probably didn't know that he was going to lose his
Speaker 3: majorities in both chambers ultimately and be severely constrained in
Speaker 3: his political power going forward, leading up to the moment
Speaker 3: you describe in twenty fourteen, where he was no longer
Speaker 3: working with a Democratic majority in the House. He had
Speaker 3: Speaker Bayner there at the time, who was in no
Speaker 3: position to deliver his majority in the House, and so
Speaker 3: it was a nice effort on the part of those
Speaker 3: members of the Senate. There were many of us who
Speaker 3: were in the House at the time, myself included, who
Speaker 3: wanted to work on that, but politically at that point impossible.
Speaker 3: You fast forward to twenty twenty one and President Biden
Speaker 3: again with majorities in both chambers. This is not the
Speaker 3: issue that he chooses to move forward on for whatever reason.
Speaker 1: What do you think is the reason.
Speaker 3: I don't think there's anything nefarious or malicious. I want
Speaker 3: to make that clear. The President chose to focus on
Speaker 3: the very real crisis born of the pandemic, a crisis
Speaker 3: of public health and life and death. He chose to
Speaker 3: focus on infrastructure and making sure that we make the
Speaker 3: investments in roads, bridges, water systems, internet connectivity that are
Speaker 3: causing us to fall behind some parts of the world
Speaker 3: and some parts of America. To fall behind others. He
Speaker 3: chose to focus on the climate crisis and was able
Speaker 3: to pull together really an extraordinary coalition of congress people
Speaker 3: to get that done, the most far reaching climate legislation
Speaker 3: this country's ever seen, well short of what is needed,
Speaker 3: but perhaps about as far as he could have taken
Speaker 3: it with the very slim majority he had in the
Speaker 3: United States Senate. But in that mix, we didn't have
Speaker 3: things like voting rights, which I've made the case are
Speaker 3: really important if you want to see a democracy work
Speaker 3: in a place like Texas. And in that mix, we
Speaker 3: didn't see immigration, which is going to continue to be
Speaker 3: both a humanitarian crisis and Sam, I'll argue right now
Speaker 3: to you, is going to be a political crisis for Democrats.
Speaker 3: If we cannot fix this, I guarantee you we will
Speaker 3: own this because the other side is content with their cruelty.
Speaker 3: They'll build walls and put up razor wire barriers in
Speaker 3: the river, and they'll say when people die and drown, well,
Speaker 3: maybe they shouldn't have tried to cross in the first place.
Speaker 3: That's their case. They're comfortable with it. The people who
Speaker 3: support that understand it. What is ours? I don't know
Speaker 3: what it is? Right now, because I haven't seen a
Speaker 3: leader of our party actually get something meaningful done on this.
Speaker 1: In your book, we've got to try you connect the
Speaker 1: dots and make the case that perhaps some of the
Speaker 1: GOP's comfort with barbarism, with antagonistic, derisive language towards Latinos
Speaker 1: really can be brought back to Trump's announcement to run
Speaker 1: for office in twenty fifteen. Why don't we take a
Speaker 1: look at that for a second.
Speaker 4: They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, their rapists, and some
Speaker 4: I assume are good people. But I speak to border
Speaker 4: guards and they tell us what we're getting, and it
Speaker 4: only makes common sense. It only makes common sense. This
Speaker 4: its en us, not the right people. It's coming from
Speaker 4: more than Mexico. It's coming from all over South in
Speaker 4: Latin America, and it's coming probably from the Middle East.
Speaker 4: But we don't know because we have no protection and
Speaker 4: we have no competence. We don't know what's happening. And
Speaker 4: it's got to stop, and it's got to stop fast.
Speaker 1: When you watch that clip, now, how much of his rhetoric,
Speaker 1: that comfort with criminalizing and brutalizing specifically Mexicans, does that
Speaker 1: really begin to take hold of the GOP.
Speaker 3: In that announcement, it marks this very clear break with
Speaker 3: the GOP of George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan.
Speaker 3: I just watched a clip of a debate between the
Speaker 3: two of them when they were running against each other
Speaker 3: in the Republican primary in nineteen eighty They're in Houston, Texas,
Speaker 3: and both of them are like fighting each other to
Speaker 3: show how open hearted and humanistic they are about immigration,
Speaker 3: acknowledging that the system wasn't working, but that the answer
Speaker 3: couldn't be simply turning people back or deporting all these folks,
Speaker 3: and lo and behold, Reagan is able to lead that
Speaker 3: effort in nineteen eighty six, and there's still a strain
Speaker 3: of that within the Republican Party coming in to this
Speaker 3: announcement speech that Trump makes in Trump Tower in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3: I guess there's this moment in the Republican Party and
Speaker 3: probably in America like who the fuck is this guy?
Speaker 3: On the part of some and others saying to themselves,
Speaker 3: finally he is saying out loud exactly the way I
Speaker 3: feel inside and have been afraid to say for fear
Speaker 3: of not being politically correct or being shot down, or
Speaker 3: I didn't know that I had a home in either
Speaker 3: of these political parties. And seeing Donald Trump's rhetoric acted
Speaker 3: out by Greg Abbott and these DPS troopers on defenseless
Speaker 3: asylum seeking children and mothers, is our chance to stand
Speaker 3: up in the face of this act and stop it
Speaker 3: from happening.
Speaker 1: You know, we can go back and forth on rhetoric
Speaker 1: and theory, and people say this then, and what did
Speaker 1: it mean and how did it play out? But I
Speaker 1: want to go to something that is real. On August second,
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, Governor Abbott sent out a fundraising email accusing
Speaker 1: Democrats like yourself of quote plotting to transform Texas and
Speaker 1: our entire country through illegal immigration. The email continues, if
Speaker 1: we're going to defend Texas, we'll need to take matters
Speaker 1: into our own hands. The next day, and a Walmart
Speaker 1: in your hometown of El Paso, that's maybe eight nine
Speaker 1: miles from where you live, a twenty one year old
Speaker 1: gunman drove, as you said earlier, six hundred miles across Texas.
Speaker 1: He went into that Walmart, took matters into his own hands,
Speaker 1: killed twenty three people. Those people were children, They were mothers,
Speaker 1: they were fathers, they were grandparents. And he did this
Speaker 1: according to his own manifesto, as a response to the
Speaker 1: quote Hispanic invasion of Texas, citing the Great Replacement theory,
Speaker 1: the gunmen claimed to be defending my country from cultural
Speaker 1: and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion. Those words
Speaker 1: that we've been batting around on that day, almost exactly
Speaker 1: four years ago, as we're talking right now, wasn't just words.
Speaker 1: It produced real action, and it produced real lives lost.
Speaker 1: And I wondered, as a father, as a resident of
Speaker 1: El Paso, how you hold the weight of all this
Speaker 1: four years later.
Speaker 3: I think the connection you draw between the rhetoric and
Speaker 3: language used by people in positions of power and the
Speaker 3: actions that that rhetoric inspires is so important, because you
Speaker 3: just made the case that El Paso, that massacre on
Speaker 3: the third of August twenty nineteen would not have happened otherwise.
Speaker 3: It was fully animated by the Great Replacement theory, by
Speaker 3: Donald Trump's warning of an invasion, by Greg Abbott's demand
Speaker 3: that we take matters into our own hands. And yet,
Speaker 3: as an El Paso and as someone who's lived here
Speaker 3: my entire life, I've known that long before Donald Trump,
Speaker 3: the border was the focus of so many of our
Speaker 3: fears of people who did not look like or speak
Speaker 3: like the majority of Americans coming into this country and
Speaker 3: changing this country as as they came, much as you know,
Speaker 3: the Irish did in the nineteenth century, and Southern Europeans
Speaker 3: and people from all over different parts of the world
Speaker 3: did at different times, inspiring that kind of fear and anxiety.
Speaker 3: But for much of my life it has been here,
Speaker 3: literally in El Paso, where we meet the rest of
Speaker 3: the world, where the rest of our country in at
Speaker 3: least the language of these populace and demagogues, is supposed
Speaker 3: to be afraid. You know, Donald Trump would routinely talk
Speaker 3: about El Paso as a dangerous place, literally lying no
Speaker 3: basis in truth whatsoever. But those lies were able to
Speaker 3: take hold because people had been conditioned for so long
Speaker 3: to think about immigrants in this way and to think
Speaker 3: about the border in this way. And so I just
Speaker 3: knew that it's really important, and I know now that
Speaker 3: it's really important that we understand the power of that
Speaker 3: language and that rhetoric, and we don't just say what
Speaker 3: those guys are telling you is wrong, and it's important
Speaker 3: to do that, but that we also share our own stories,
Speaker 3: because if we don't tell our story, somebody else will
Speaker 3: tell it for us. And that was what Trump and
Speaker 3: Abbott and others were so successful at doing. And so
Speaker 3: the things that you and I have been talking about today,
Speaker 3: they can seem intractable or impossible. Like we haven't had
Speaker 3: immigration reform since nineteen eighty six, We'll never get it.
Speaker 3: We have school shootings and they only seem to increase.
Speaker 3: It will never get better. The planet is warming. We're
Speaker 3: incapable of mounting a political response. We might as well
Speaker 3: give up. But in this book, I tell the story
Speaker 3: of people, including those from El Paso, who were denied
Speaker 3: the ability to vote because they were black, and fought
Speaker 3: for decades to win voting integration in Texas by nineteen
Speaker 3: forty four, inspired LBJ to pass the Voting Rights Act
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty five. That took generations to get done.
Speaker 3: And so when it comes to this question of rhetoric
Speaker 3: and the damage that it does to very real human
Speaker 3: lives and places like El Paso, we can't give into this,
Speaker 3: and we can't allow that massacre in twenty nineteen to
Speaker 3: be the end of the story. It must push us
Speaker 3: to do better, to do more, to engage with our
Speaker 3: fellow Americans, offer them the truth about who we are,
Speaker 3: what we mean, and what we contribute to the rest
Speaker 3: of this country. I think that has to be part
Speaker 3: of the conditioning that sets the stage for who else, however,
Speaker 3: the president is that ultimately leads on immigration reform and
Speaker 3: ending the tragedy and the needless death that we're seeing
Speaker 3: on the border today.
Speaker 1: After the break more from Beto or work, you keep
Speaker 1: coming back to this, this need to tell a new story,
Speaker 1: and looking at how you ran your race for governor
Speaker 1: this past year, it seemed like you were trying to
Speaker 1: tell a new story. But I wonder because back in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen you had this quote you said, the morning
Speaker 1: of election day, every part of me knew that we
Speaker 1: were going to win in and the opposite happened. You
Speaker 1: come two and a half points short. It was a
Speaker 1: loss that was hard to accept and understand. This past November,
Speaker 1: when the results came in and you lost to Governor
Speaker 1: Abbott by a little more than ten percent, how did
Speaker 1: you process and begin to understand how and why that happened.
Speaker 3: It's almost like a law of physics of this inertia
Speaker 3: you've been for the past year pushing at almost unbearable
Speaker 3: speed to connect with enough people that you can win
Speaker 3: this election so that you can do the good things
Speaker 3: you've been talking about and stop the bad things that
Speaker 3: you see happening all around you across the state of Texas.
Speaker 3: And there's never time to really wonder about the odds
Speaker 3: or to ever even entertain the notion that you're not
Speaker 3: going to prevail, because that can defeat the entire enterprise
Speaker 3: before it's decided, Like, how can you mount this effort?
Speaker 3: If some part of you thinks that this is not
Speaker 3: going to work, you just wouldn't do it. It's like
Speaker 3: you're running this crazy race where you're killing yourself over
Speaker 3: the course of it. So you come through this, the
Speaker 3: elections decided, you have lost, and you've stopped physically moving,
Speaker 3: but everything inside of you is still pushing forward. You
Speaker 3: care just as much about the next school shooting, which
Speaker 3: is bound to happen because we are not changing the
Speaker 3: laws in Texas to match our values. You still care
Speaker 3: about the people who can't get an abortion or even
Speaker 3: just see a reproductive healthcare provider and are likely going
Speaker 3: to lose their lives because of it. And yet you
Speaker 3: no longer have this vehicle or platform to change that
Speaker 3: in the near future, and that Sam is the toughest
Speaker 3: thing in the world. Where does this energy go? And
Speaker 3: I'll tell you the last you know, eight nine months
Speaker 3: have been spent working through that, and a lot of
Speaker 3: that is reaching back out to folks across the state
Speaker 3: of Texas and finding out where I can be useful
Speaker 3: and helpful, and getting back to something that we have
Speaker 3: done very well over the last five or six years,
Speaker 3: which is engaging with prospective voters, helping them to get registered,
Speaker 3: bringing them onto the roles, and fighting back against this
Speaker 3: significant voter suppression and voter intimidation that we see here.
Speaker 3: So if this is all worth fighting for, and it
Speaker 3: very clearly is, then you can't give up and you
Speaker 3: just have to find a different role and way to
Speaker 3: be in this fight.
Speaker 1: I think anyone listening to this right now when you
Speaker 1: ask the rhetorical question, where do you pour this energy into? Well,
Speaker 1: you've poured it into this podcast most certainly, and you've
Speaker 1: poured it into going on every kind of cable news
Speaker 1: program and talking about what's happening in Texas. But I
Speaker 1: want to say with the data, because you know this
Speaker 1: past election you won nineteen counties in twenty eighteen, you
Speaker 1: won thirty two counties. In the intervening four or five years.
Speaker 1: What has changed in the Texas electorate that precipitated that dip?
Speaker 1: Do you think the divisions have grown deeper between left
Speaker 1: and right? Was there something in your messaging that you
Speaker 1: would do differently? Now? How do we unpack that?
Speaker 3: There's a lot to it. I got time you mentioned
Speaker 3: another factor earlier, which is at twenty eighteen, was the
Speaker 3: first referendum on Donald Trump's election of twenty sixteen, And
Speaker 3: to the credit of the good people of Texas, they
Speaker 3: knew that Ted Cruz was Donald Trump's partner in the Senate,
Speaker 3: and they knew that we could do better, and they
Speaker 3: turned out at historic levels. I think the largest voter
Speaker 3: turnout in Texas in forty years. It almost eclipsed presidential
Speaker 3: election turnout levels, and we very nearly won. So all
Speaker 3: of those were factors that made twenty eighteen really an
Speaker 3: exceptional year. And then there's Ted Cruz. I mean, believe
Speaker 3: it or not, there are a lot of people in
Speaker 3: Texas who love him because he's their guy, and he's
Speaker 3: willing to do any outlandish, stupid thing necessary for their cause,
Speaker 3: including inciting insurrection and rebellion in the Capitol, but he
Speaker 3: also inspires extraordinary energy and effort and voting. On the
Speaker 3: other side, Greg Abbott, though, I would argue, is just
Speaker 3: as if not more dangerous to the people of Texas
Speaker 3: than Ted Cruz is able to put across such a
Speaker 3: lukewarm milk toast persona in complete contrast to what Cruz
Speaker 3: does that just on superficial indicators for people, there's not
Speaker 3: as much to hold on to or to hate or
Speaker 3: to be against. But you ask another important question, are
Speaker 3: there things I could have done differently? Absolutely? I mean
Speaker 3: it's not all on those factors that I just described.
Speaker 3: Some of that is my responsibility as the candidate to
Speaker 3: have a message that was better at cutting through the
Speaker 3: fear mongering about immigrants and asylum seekers and invasions that
Speaker 3: were taking place at our border. And I'm one of
Speaker 3: those people who believe that in a contest like this,
Speaker 3: you either win or you learn.
Speaker 1: What did you learn?
Speaker 3: I think one of the most powerful things that we
Speaker 3: were a part of in twenty eighteen was direct, physical
Speaker 3: voter engagement. So you may or may not see the
Speaker 3: TV ad or remember the mailer You'll never forget that
Speaker 3: another human being in one hundred and five degree heat,
Speaker 3: which is how hot it is in El Pasa today,
Speaker 3: took the time to knock on your door and have
Speaker 3: a conversation to say, Hey, Sam, this guy Betto is
Speaker 3: running for Senate in that case, and these are some
Speaker 3: things that he would like to do for Texas. But
Speaker 3: I showed up here today to ask you what is
Speaker 3: most important to you, and that two way conversation I
Speaker 3: believe produced that historic turnout. We had a version of
Speaker 3: that in twenty and twenty two. I don't know that
Speaker 3: we prioritize that in person connection the way that we
Speaker 3: did in twenty eighteen and the way that I think
Speaker 3: could have helped us to achieve at a much much
Speaker 3: higher level. I think there's also a case to be
Speaker 3: made for a greater focus on voter registration. You read
Speaker 3: out the numbers and the statistics earlier. There are a
Speaker 3: lot of potential voters out there who literally aren't on
Speaker 3: the roles and cannot participate in an election. It is
Speaker 3: tough work, It is the shit work of a campaign,
Speaker 3: and nobody wants to do it so it doesn't get done.
Speaker 3: And yet people like me organizations like ours, powered by people.
Speaker 3: We need to be doing that work or we're not
Speaker 3: going to correct for the imbalance produced by voter suppression
Speaker 3: and voter intimidation. And then lastly, money's not everything, but
Speaker 3: money's a lot. And if you're outspent one hundred and
Speaker 3: forty million plus to eighty million, and you're already going
Speaker 3: against the person in power, right, you need need additional
Speaker 3: support and help. And if you look at sam what's
Speaker 3: been invested in Texas from outside of Texas over the
Speaker 3: last six years that I've been running statewide campaigns, it
Speaker 3: pales in comparison to what's been invested in Georgia, which
Speaker 3: is a third the size of Texas, to Wisconsin, to Pennsylvania,
Speaker 3: to you name a state that is a battleground state.
Speaker 3: And then you look at Texas. We are the future
Speaker 3: of this country, whether you like it or not. Forty
Speaker 3: electoral college votes, thirty million people. It's the future of
Speaker 3: energy production, it's the future of immigration. And I think
Speaker 3: we have a case made that national donors and everyday
Speaker 3: Democrats should be contributing to causes in Texas to give
Speaker 3: candidates here a fighting chance to win, because it's good
Speaker 3: for the people in this state and it will be
Speaker 3: terrific for the people in this country.
Speaker 1: Well, you know that iPhone banked for you by way
Speaker 1: of powered by people. So I need no convincing on
Speaker 1: a personal level. And yet I have to say there's
Speaker 1: like this nagging question that's like eating at me that
Speaker 1: I imagine many people listening are thinking, and it's not
Speaker 1: one they want to ask, and it's not really one
Speaker 1: I want to ask, But I feel like I gotta
Speaker 1: because we've done a good job here. I think of
Speaker 1: trying to tell the truth, and the truth is whether
Speaker 1: it's the crew's loss in twenty eighteen, the Abbot lost
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two. You mentioned Georgia where Stacy Abrams,
Speaker 1: who has come on this show, she lost in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two as well, after having lost the last time
Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen to Brian Kemp. And I just wonder,
Speaker 1: this optimism you hold, this hope you have in people,
Speaker 1: has it not been shaken by these results, by these
Speaker 1: past elections.
Speaker 3: I think, then, what's the alternative? Do you you give up?
Speaker 3: Do you give in? Do you accept everything that I've
Speaker 3: just described that's taking place in Texas as our permanent future?
Speaker 3: And fate. I can't do that. Ultimately we will prevail.
Speaker 3: I believe that in every bone in my body. The
Speaker 3: question is how long is it going to take? And
Speaker 3: I think that's a matter of effort, it's a matter
Speaker 3: of resources, it's a matter of luck. But those things
Speaker 3: that I can control, like effort and raising the resources
Speaker 3: and using whatever platform I have, to direct people's attention
Speaker 3: and volunteer hours and dollars to those activities that will
Speaker 3: shorten the amount of time between now and when we
Speaker 3: ultimately win. That's my job, that's my role. And I
Speaker 3: mentioned these stories that are so inspiring to me. If
Speaker 3: people who are in the trenches for decades, sometimes generations,
Speaker 3: you know, those civil rights leaders from the end of
Speaker 3: reconstruction towards the end of the nineteenth century till nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty four to the Civil Rights Act in sixty five,
Speaker 3: the Voting Rights Act. Imagine if they just said, you
Speaker 3: know what, fuck it, it's just too hard. We're never
Speaker 3: going to overcome Jim Crow will never overcome white supremacy
Speaker 3: and racism in this country. This is just something we
Speaker 3: got to live with. And of course they didn't, and
Speaker 3: they pushed the people in power, including most famously Johnson,
Speaker 3: who told Martin Luther King Junior at the end of
Speaker 3: sixty four, I just don't have the power to do
Speaker 3: voting rights. I wish I could, you know, God bless you,
Speaker 3: good luck. And King leaves a meeting and he says,
Speaker 3: we got to go get this guy some power, and
Speaker 3: they go and get him some power. John Lewis, most
Speaker 3: notably almost losing his life in Selma, Alabama. Within eight days,
Speaker 3: Johnson is convening a joint session of Congress, and he's
Speaker 3: pushing this country forward. We give credit to Johnson, he
Speaker 3: deserves much of it, but he wouldn't be there without
Speaker 3: John Lewis, without doctor King, without the generations of civil
Speaker 3: rights leaders who preceded them, right whose names we don't
Speaker 3: even know. But they never gave in. They never gave up.
Speaker 3: They told themselves, I've got to try. And that's the
Speaker 3: spirit that animates me. And I hope this moment and
Speaker 3: brings us to where we need to be as a
Speaker 3: country and as a state.
Speaker 1: Here in Texas, you can see my frustration. I am
Speaker 1: tired of losing. I can't stand this. As a Chicagoan
Speaker 1: created in the image of Jordan, I am so fucking
Speaker 1: tired of losing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and again, I just got to tell you. You know,
Speaker 3: the folks we mentioned civil rights and voting rights, they
Speaker 3: didn't win for decades, for generations, Like some people didn't
Speaker 3: see that victory in their lifetime, no matter how hard
Speaker 3: they fought, but ultimately they won. There is a lot
Speaker 3: of evidence in our shared history that's staying in this fight.
Speaker 3: As frustrating as it is to those like you, Sam,
Speaker 3: who have been film banking and fighting for and voting
Speaker 3: for candidates you believe in, only to see them lose.
Speaker 3: If we give up up after a given number of
Speaker 3: election cycles, it's just going to prolong the amount of
Speaker 3: time that we're in this fight those who are left
Speaker 3: to fight it before we win.
Speaker 1: Do you consider yourself a masochist?
Speaker 3: You know what, I have a high tolerance for pain.
Speaker 1: Is that why you're a runner?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm a runner. I'm a cyclist. I'm a hiker.
Speaker 3: I'm a backpacker. I like to put the miles on
Speaker 3: and I like to push myself physically, mentally, probably emotionally,
Speaker 3: which is what you're doing in a campaign, or at
Speaker 3: least in the campaigns that I've run. And you have
Speaker 3: to like that because if you don't, you'll be destroyed.
Speaker 3: And so yeah, I think some part of me is
Speaker 3: good with that.
Speaker 1: I think that's probably our shared connection. Then to bring
Speaker 1: it to where we started in this moment, in this
Speaker 1: fight against the brutalization that Operation Lone Star has been
Speaker 1: driven by. What do you want President Biden to do?
Speaker 3: I want him to come pull up that buoy barrier,
Speaker 3: this drowning device in the middle of the Rio Grande
Speaker 3: River outside of Eagle Pass. I want him to pull
Speaker 3: up the razor wire wrapped barrels that are submerged under
Speaker 3: the waterline that are entangling and drowning these migrants and
Speaker 3: asylum seekers. I want him to resolve the conflict between
Speaker 3: state DPS troopers who are pushing pregnant mothers and children
Speaker 3: back into the river and Federal Border Patrol agents who
Speaker 3: are trying to do their job and process these asylum
Speaker 3: seekers as they set foot on American soil, follow the
Speaker 3: law of the land. This is his responsibility, and I
Speaker 3: don't think the Department of Justice lawsuit that is requesting
Speaker 3: that Greg Abbott pull up that barrier is enough. We
Speaker 3: don't know when it will be resolved. We do know
Speaker 3: that people will die in the meantime, and we need
Speaker 3: to see leadership from him. And so I think it
Speaker 3: is really that simple and that clear and that necessary
Speaker 3: for the president to act and to act right now.
Speaker 1: Do you think you will?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I'll say this. I had the chance
Speaker 3: to get to know him a little bit when I
Speaker 3: was in Congress and he was a vice president, a
Speaker 3: little bit when I was on the campaign trail with
Speaker 3: him in twenty nineteen, and everything I gather from that
Speaker 3: is that he is a good moral man who wants
Speaker 3: to and often does, do the right thing at the
Speaker 3: right time at these moments of truth. So I have
Speaker 3: some confidence that he's going to come through. I also
Speaker 3: know that there are countervailing political pressures from those around him,
Speaker 3: warning him of the danger of tangling up with the
Speaker 3: governor of the state of Texas on an issue that
Speaker 3: is difficult to explain that is politically popular. On the
Speaker 3: other side, you know, build the wall, send them back.
Speaker 3: Who cares if they drawn? And there's a very important civilizational,
Speaker 3: defining level presidential election taking place, and they don't want
Speaker 3: to fuck this up. And I understand all of that,
Speaker 3: But fear of the politics around this is not going
Speaker 3: to be a good look going into twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3: Fearlessly doing the right thing. Whatever the polling suggests to
Speaker 3: the contrary, is going to be something that, by the
Speaker 3: time this election is called in November of twenty four, will,
Speaker 3: to the president's credit, engender confidence in the American public
Speaker 3: that this is the right guy, the guy with the
Speaker 3: strength and the moral clarity to do this job for America.
Speaker 3: And the basis for my case is this is literally
Speaker 3: what he ran on in twenty twenty when you had
Speaker 3: a president who had just put kids in cages, separated
Speaker 3: babies from their mothers at the US Mexico border, referred
Speaker 3: to them as animals, and inspired the shooting in El
Speaker 3: Paso that killed twenty three people. Candidate Joe Biden said,
Speaker 3: we're going to get back to the moral center of
Speaker 3: this country. We're going to do the right thing, and
Speaker 3: we're going to make sure that our policies and our
Speaker 3: actions match our values. Here is his chance to act
Speaker 3: on that and show the American public he was serious
Speaker 3: about it, and to win yet another election against Donald
Speaker 3: Trump on this same issue.
Speaker 1: And yet when I pose the question of whether he'll
Speaker 1: do it or not, it was the first time in
Speaker 1: our entire hour together that you paused before giving an answer.
Speaker 3: Trying to be honest with you, and in all honesty,
Speaker 3: I am troubled by the fact that the president has
Speaker 3: yet to act, and that in part informs that pause
Speaker 3: that you noticed. But I also, you know, as a
Speaker 3: student of American history, I know that presidents can't do
Speaker 3: this on their own. They have to be pushed or
Speaker 3: in Johnson's case, given the power by those of us
Speaker 3: in California, Texas and the other forty eight and our
Speaker 3: territories to do the right thing. And we've seen it
Speaker 3: time and time again in American history. You know. Apocryphaly,
Speaker 3: there's a story told that FDR is meeting with the
Speaker 3: NAACP and they're making the case to him about civil
Speaker 3: rights and voting rights, and he says to them, you're
Speaker 3: right now, make me do it. And I wonder if
Speaker 3: Biden isn't saying to us in Texas, you're right now,
Speaker 3: make me do it. And so I'm not judging him,
Speaker 3: I'm not faulting him, but I am going to do
Speaker 3: everything I can to help produce the pressure and the
Speaker 3: popular will to help him do the thing that I
Speaker 3: think he wants to do. Deep down inside, and.
Speaker 1: Before I called you up, I was talking to my
Speaker 1: dad about the border. And obviously, as you know, my
Speaker 1: personal familial connection to this issue is why I made
Speaker 1: that short film that you saw, and why in part
Speaker 1: I wanted to sit with you again. And in many
Speaker 1: ways this conversation has really been about convictions, why we
Speaker 1: do the things we do, why you've done the things
Speaker 1: you do, and in so many ways, I want to
Speaker 1: ask the question that a very very young Ulysses asked
Speaker 1: of you back in twenty thirteen, which came about, I
Speaker 1: believe in the first few weeks of you being elected
Speaker 1: to office and the House Representatives, and you fly back
Speaker 1: home because of a government shut down led by none
Speaker 1: other than Senator Ted Cruz, and that night, as you're
Speaker 1: back home for a twelve hour visit, you put him
Speaker 1: to bed and he says.
Speaker 3: What he says, Dad, why do you want to have
Speaker 3: a job where you never see us?
Speaker 1: And what did you say?
Speaker 3: I mean, I did my best to make senseive it
Speaker 3: for him, and I think, as I've told you before,
Speaker 3: or to make sense of it for myself. Because he
Speaker 3: asked the question for both of us, it caused me
Speaker 3: to ask the question on myself, what the fuck am
Speaker 3: I doing here? Like, literally, the government that I am
Speaker 3: a part of is shut down. I'm in the minority,
Speaker 3: I'm a freshman. Am I going to be able to
Speaker 3: get anything done? And is the little I am probably
Speaker 3: going to be able to get done worth the sacrifice
Speaker 3: that this kid who had no say in the matter
Speaker 3: is paying right now? Yeah, And it wasn't a slam dunk.
Speaker 3: It wasn't a like, well, this is just what we
Speaker 3: do in the our household. You know, I'm so glad
Speaker 3: just to tell you, Sam, that I did stay in Congress,
Speaker 3: I ran for reelection, was actually able to do far
Speaker 3: more than it looked like like I would be able
Speaker 3: to achieve at that moment. But You're right, it comes
Speaker 3: at a cost, and it comes at a cost to
Speaker 3: the volunteers and the staff and the people who have
Speaker 3: made whatever success I've had. But you know, it's all relative, right,
Speaker 3: and you think about the sacrifices that other families are
Speaker 3: making to serve this country in other ways. I served
Speaker 3: on the Veterans Affairs Committee for six years, and there
Speaker 3: was not a veteran or an active duty service member
Speaker 3: I met who wouldn't tell me that their entire family
Speaker 3: was effectively serving with them, right, And that responsibility is
Speaker 3: one that I take very seriously when we think about
Speaker 3: what powered by people will do next. For example, I
Speaker 3: want to make sure that what we ask our volunteers,
Speaker 3: what I ask of myself and my family, is going
Speaker 3: to be the most effective option to shorten that period
Speaker 3: of time when we're living in this brutality and this
Speaker 3: deep evil that defines the government of the State of
Speaker 3: Texas right now, because it's going to take a lot
Speaker 3: of effort, a lot of pain, a lot of sacrifice,
Speaker 3: and a lot of service, and we've got to make
Speaker 3: sure that it's worth it. And so yeah, great, great,
Speaker 3: great question that Ulysses asked and that you just report.
Speaker 1: I guess my last question as a follow up to him,
Speaker 1: which is, after these past ten years since he asked
Speaker 1: that question, is your answer as to why and how
Speaker 1: you stay in this fian has it been clarified in
Speaker 1: the intervening decades since your son asked you that?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: When I started out in Congress, the community I represented
Speaker 3: had the worst weight times for a veteran to see
Speaker 3: a mental health care provider, and that was directly connected
Speaker 3: to very high rates of suicide, self harm, and suffering
Speaker 3: that we were seeing in El Paso, focusing on that issue,
Speaker 3: building coalitions of Democrats and Republicans, and even working with
Speaker 3: President Trump, with whom I served for a couple of
Speaker 3: years towards the end of my time in Congress, we
Speaker 3: were able to make people's lives better, to shorten those
Speaker 3: weight times, and to avert tragedy for these families who'd
Speaker 3: already given so much for this country. There are so
Speaker 3: many other instances and people that I have been able
Speaker 3: to help. Despite some of the defeats that we have suffered,
Speaker 3: we have made this a better place for the service
Speaker 3: that we provided, the effort that we've expended, the struggle
Speaker 3: that we've been a part of, and I feel so
Speaker 3: goddamn lucky to have been a part of that and
Speaker 3: to still be a part of it in some way.
Speaker 3: And my hope is, because we started with my kids,
Speaker 3: and you're asking this really good question at the end
Speaker 3: of the interview, my hope is that later in Ulysses' life,
Speaker 3: and he's sixteen now, so I hope he's seeing it
Speaker 3: now he understands that. And I asked this rhetorical question
Speaker 3: earlier in the interview you know, these kids and moms
Speaker 3: who are drowning in the Rio Grande River right now
Speaker 3: because of the cruelty of our governor. At some point,
Speaker 3: future generations will look at our generation and say, well,
Speaker 3: what the hell were you guys doing when this was happening?
Speaker 3: Were you powerless to stop it? And this is that
Speaker 3: future generation, and I want him to look back on
Speaker 3: this moment and say, you know what, I'm proud of
Speaker 3: what my dad did, not just for the effort, but
Speaker 3: because he was part of a larger movement that ultimately
Speaker 3: stopped this inhumanity and replaced it with something that we're
Speaker 3: proud of, a system by which people can come here legally, safely,
Speaker 3: without losing their lives, and in an orderly fashion so
Speaker 3: it doesn't freak people out in other parts of the country.
Speaker 3: I'm working for that, for him and for the world
Speaker 3: that he will inherit based on what we do or
Speaker 3: what we fail to do.
Speaker 1: Well. I sure hope for my generation for his generation,
Speaker 1: we're not that far off, but we're a little far
Speaker 1: off that we can both look back and see a
Speaker 1: change that we desperately need. I hope that happens, and
Speaker 1: in the interim, I so appreciate all that you have
Speaker 1: done and what I imagine you'll continue to do well.
Speaker 3: Thank you and thanks for having this conversation and focusing
Speaker 3: on the things that are just so important and are
Speaker 3: not going to change unless we take that action, unless
Speaker 3: we're focused on it, unless we understand the stakes and
Speaker 3: the opportunities before us to do the right thing. So
Speaker 3: very grateful to you and looking forward to the next time.
Speaker 1: As am I Beto or Work a pleasure.
Speaker 3: Adios.
Speaker 1: That was my conversation with Beto or Work, as you
Speaker 1: heard him mentioned throughout the episode. His organization Powered by
Speaker 1: People helps organize volunteers to reach eligible Texas voters to register, vote,
Speaker 1: and volunteer. If you'd like to get involved, you can
Speaker 1: visit poweredexpeople dot org. Earlier this month, they sent a
Speaker 1: letter to President Biden with sixty five thousand signatures pleading
Speaker 1: with him to stop Governor Appa It's cruelty at the
Speaker 1: Texas Mexico border. As of today, President Biden has yet
Speaker 1: to take executive action. If you'd like to take action,
Speaker 1: we've included links to the Texas Rio Grand Legal Aid,
Speaker 1: the Texas ACLU, and Mission Border Hope and Eagle Paths
Speaker 1: all on our website at talk easypod dot com. We've
Speaker 1: also included that link in the description of this episode
Speaker 1: on your phone. Now, before we go, why don't we
Speaker 1: call my dad back for a second and just check
Speaker 1: it on them. Dad, you there, I'm here. Don't sound
Speaker 1: so excited, are you.
Speaker 2: In your little room there, your little little dungeon?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm you know what, your father, my grandfather, Sebastian
Speaker 1: worked long and hard for me to work in this
Speaker 1: little box, taped this podcast. Okay, I've never called it
Speaker 1: a dungeon, but but what the hell, we'll call it
Speaker 1: a dungeon.
Speaker 2: You do have his his typewriter there, so that's.
Speaker 5: That's that's a good start, and his middle name.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But really, though, how did it go with the with
Speaker 2: mister Petro Rourke?
Speaker 1: It really went well. The thing that struck me about him,
Speaker 1: and it's probably why I liked him so much, you know,
Speaker 1: four or five years ago when he first ran for
Speaker 1: Senate against Ted Cruz, is he just has this irrepressible
Speaker 1: spirit about him, this dogged determination to fight the good fight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to make the case for that fight in clear and
Speaker 1: stark terms. And towards the end of the episode, I
Speaker 1: had found in the research that about ten eleven years back,
Speaker 1: when he was first a congressman in Texas, his oldest
Speaker 1: son Ulysses, one night after work asked him a really
Speaker 1: tough and kind of profound question, and he said, Dad,
Speaker 1: why do you want to have a job where you're
Speaker 1: never with us? Because being a congressman, of course, means
Speaker 1: that you have to spend a lot of time in DC.
Speaker 1: You had to spend a lot of time on the road,
Speaker 1: on the trail campaigning.
Speaker 2: Oh every two years here was campaigning, And I.
Speaker 1: Just thought that question to bring us full circle. Was
Speaker 1: it one that you ever asked your father Sebastian when
Speaker 1: he came here in the early sixties, became a citizen
Speaker 1: and had to work tirelessly as a forklift driver for
Speaker 1: thirty forty years, did you ever ask him that question?
Speaker 2: No? And you know, it's the questions to his life,
Speaker 2: unfortunately came out towards the end of his life, and
Speaker 2: it it's interesting, if I could do it again, I
Speaker 2: wish I asked what did he give up? I knew
Speaker 2: what he gave up, but at the same time, how
Speaker 2: does it make you feel like, you know, giving up
Speaker 2: his parents, giving up his family, because back then. I mean,
Speaker 2: there is no video calls, there are no FaceTime and
Speaker 2: all that. You have the letters, but the connection it
Speaker 2: wasn't there. The Thanksgiving is, the Christmases, the whatever I
Speaker 2: mean that was lost. He created his own family and
Speaker 2: so selfishly those questions on my part never came up.
Speaker 2: It does haunt me. And unfortunately, my last conversation that
Speaker 2: I had with him, it was at an ihop after
Speaker 2: he did this chemo. This it was like a procedure
Speaker 2: they were doing. They were isolating this cancer and his body.
Speaker 2: And he came out fine because he loved and we
Speaker 2: went there and I just turned on my recorder and
Speaker 2: my phone and just started asking him about and that's
Speaker 2: the first time I heard about his adventures in Denver,
Speaker 2: and not adventures, but he was working in Denver and
Speaker 2: how he was separated by four years from his own
Speaker 2: family because he knew that if he could make it here,
Speaker 2: and the only way that he was going to have
Speaker 2: them come over here was the right way because they
Speaker 2: came with visas. They didn't have to cross that border,
Speaker 2: that desert or river or running going into whatever situation
Speaker 2: they had. They came here, you know, on a train,
Speaker 2: but with a passport. That's a big difference.
Speaker 1: He came here mostly illegally, though there were a couple
Speaker 1: of work visas so that you could come here legally.
Speaker 2: Yes, just to give them an opportunity. Imagine you're telling
Speaker 2: your three kids to come to this country. They have
Speaker 2: they've never spoken English in their lives into a situation
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty sixty one where racism was rampant, into
Speaker 2: a neighborhood that was just starting to change, but the
Speaker 2: schools were not changing, and they were welcomed. But at
Speaker 2: the same time, you better simulate fast, and the only
Speaker 2: way you can do that is by speaking the language.
Speaker 2: And there was no bilingualism. There was no you know,
Speaker 2: affirm amount of action, there was nothing like that. It
Speaker 2: was just you got to tough it out. We're here.
Speaker 2: The idea is to be here. And that's why I've
Speaker 2: always had this hard nose kind of attitude, like the
Speaker 2: biggest step is to get here. After that, what do
Speaker 2: you do with it? And if you don't do shit
Speaker 2: with it, then why did you waste these people's time?
Speaker 1: You know, when you're talking about having that hard nose attitude,
Speaker 1: I keep going back to that story when you're eleven
Speaker 1: years old in Chicago and you're out with your friend
Speaker 1: at a grocery store. Is that the beginning of that
Speaker 1: hard nose attitude?
Speaker 2: My friend, my friend Martin, he had these He had
Speaker 2: these food stamps, which I had never seen before in
Speaker 2: my life. My family didn't have them. And I looked
Speaker 2: at them and I thought there was monopoly money. It
Speaker 2: literally looked like monopoly money, and the different colors would
Speaker 2: represented different bills twenty ten to five and things like that.
Speaker 2: So he's showing me this stuff, and I'm like, what
Speaker 2: is this. You know, it's like play money. He's like, no,
Speaker 2: we can buy food with this. Like come on, let's
Speaker 2: you're messing with me here. He's like, watch, let's go
Speaker 2: to the grocery store pick out whatever you want. I'm like, well,
Speaker 2: let's do it. So he took like fifty dollars out
Speaker 2: of this pack because you could just rip them right
Speaker 2: out like coupon's almost And we walked over right across
Speaker 2: the street from right right I live, and he's like,
Speaker 2: get whatever you want. We're walking around and I'm getting
Speaker 2: like a bunch of American food because Mexican food. I
Speaker 2: love Mexican food, don't get me wrong. But after a while,
Speaker 2: you just wanted to You wanted to have some Slobby
Speaker 2: Jos or something different. And so I'm like picking in
Speaker 2: out all these different items, and then I got some candy,
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, he goes like, no candy, No,
Speaker 2: you can't get the candy. I'm like, okay, fine, But
Speaker 2: at the moment, I honestly thought he was joking. I said, well,
Speaker 2: let's see how far we can go with this joke.
Speaker 2: And so I fill up the card. He's adding it up.
Speaker 2: It's about forty something dollars, and now we take it
Speaker 2: to the cashire. The cashire does all the items. He
Speaker 2: pulls out the money and I'm looking at her. I'm
Speaker 2: looking at the cash here. I'm like, okay, I can't
Speaker 2: wait to see her face. All of a sudden, she
Speaker 2: takes the money. I'm like, wait a minute, she's taking
Speaker 2: the money. This is wow. And then all of a
Speaker 2: sudden she opens up the register and she pulls out
Speaker 2: change using more of that colored money. I'm like, what
Speaker 2: fun money? Was like, what is this like monopoly money?
Speaker 2: And then she pulls out some coins. They were like
Speaker 2: little blue chips for fifty cents and a bunch of
Speaker 2: different colors. I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. This
Speaker 2: is real. So I'm like okay, and Martin's like, let's go.
Speaker 2: I'm like, wow, this is amazing. So I had two
Speaker 2: bags of groceries going to my house. I see my mom.
Speaker 2: I'm like, Mom, look at look at all this groceries.
Speaker 2: She's I'm all excited. He's like, where did you get this?
Speaker 2: And then I see my dad coming from you know,
Speaker 2: from the side drive, and I go Martin, and look,
Speaker 2: we use this money, and oh boy, she said something
Speaker 2: like he has to call me that gey oh no
Speaker 2: to Papa. Oh oh. It was like that. It was
Speaker 2: like oh, it was like boom boom boom, and I'm
Speaker 2: like uh. And then I don't know what. All I
Speaker 2: knew was that we were getting good food, and so
Speaker 2: I wasn't really listening to her, and I got excited
Speaker 2: and I showed it to my dad.
Speaker 1: Your mind was blank except for the thought of sloppy
Speaker 1: Joe's that's.
Speaker 2: Right, and getting some like pizza I had. He's in there,
Speaker 2: this this stuff you put on the end of the oven,
Speaker 2: all kinds of nonsense, right, And I see my dad
Speaker 2: and I so I show him all the grocery. He's like, okay,
Speaker 2: and we use this. I'm showing him the money. He
Speaker 2: looks at me, looks at my friend Martin. He goes, Martin,
Speaker 2: mete tu casa Martin. Go home. Martin's like okay, oh
Speaker 2: bye bye. Because my dad was a little bit he's intimidating.
Speaker 2: So Martin left. I'm like, oh, what what's going on?
Speaker 2: He goes, Okay, back up all the you know, put
Speaker 2: everything back in the bag. Go back to the grocery store.
Speaker 2: My dad goes to the manager. His name was John,
Speaker 2: real nice guy, like, okay, John, can't have this. John's like,
Speaker 2: is there something wrong with it? No, just can't have it.
Speaker 2: Here's my receipt, here's all the food. Don't want it.
Speaker 2: And John, all of a sudden he's like he really,
Speaker 2: he sees the receipt, he sees that. He it's you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know what he's looking at. All of a sudden,
Speaker 2: he's like, okay, let me give you back your money.
Speaker 2: And he was going to pull out some of that money.
Speaker 2: And my Dad's like, no, I don't want the groceries.
Speaker 2: I don't want the money. Let's go again. Let's go
Speaker 2: and that's it. We left and we're walking. It's a
Speaker 2: big old parking lot, and then he looks at me.
Speaker 2: He stops and he just says, look, we don't take
Speaker 2: from this government. I have to work for this. You
Speaker 2: want this, I'm gonna work for it. You have to
Speaker 2: work for it. But I'll be damned if I'm going
Speaker 2: to take anything from this country that I hadn't earned.
Speaker 2: You get it, and I didn't get it. All I
Speaker 2: wanted was just food or whatever. But years later I
Speaker 2: got it. I got the idea that if I'm not
Speaker 2: going to earn it, well, then you better figure out
Speaker 2: a way. You got to look at the angles of
Speaker 2: everything to try to get what you wanted in this country.
Speaker 2: And so I don't believe in that kind of mentality
Speaker 2: of taking something that you didn't earn. And that's the
Speaker 2: hard nose, like the starbbornness. I mean, my father refused
Speaker 2: government cheese for buying out loud.
Speaker 1: But you love a deal more than anyone, I mean
Speaker 1: not since George Costanza has a man loved a deal
Speaker 1: like you.
Speaker 2: I love a good parking spot and a deal.
Speaker 1: Have you ever valied your car?
Speaker 2: No? Well, one time, one time, and they still and
Speaker 2: they stole my gum. I'm still very upset about that situation.
Speaker 2: I don't know why people valeate. There's parking right down
Speaker 2: the street.
Speaker 1: It's Los Angeles. You have to you have to valley
Speaker 1: some times. But this is the thing to bring it
Speaker 1: full back, like the generational divide is, Yes, he came
Speaker 1: to this country the way. So many people right now
Speaker 1: as we are talking are trying to come to this country,
Speaker 1: and at this very moment, we are not only making
Speaker 1: it difficult for them to come, we are punishing these people.
Speaker 1: We are physically abusing these people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when you have medics who aren't saying, hey, governor,
Speaker 2: stop stop abusing, that's ridiculous. You know, the border patrol
Speaker 2: are saying this is inhumane. You know there's something wrong.
Speaker 2: That's their job every single day to stop people coming
Speaker 2: over the border. But if you just do it humanely,
Speaker 2: I got no issues with that. When you do it
Speaker 2: inhumanely the way they're doing it to try to scare
Speaker 2: other people away, that's just a bullying bullshit that these
Speaker 2: people are creating. Look, I've seen some abuse, I've seen
Speaker 2: some things. When you feel it, when you can when
Speaker 2: you can smell it, man, it's not cool and it's
Speaker 2: unfortunate that Biden or some people in the administration are
Speaker 2: so afraid to get their hands dirty when right is
Speaker 2: right and wrong is wrong. You know, I sit here
Speaker 2: in my mother's living room, surrounded by a whole history
Speaker 2: of family, nieces, nephew's grandchildren, and I just think about
Speaker 2: all these people who that's all they want is an opportunity.
Speaker 1: And I suppose the reason we wanted to make this
Speaker 1: episode to help tell the story about this moment is
Speaker 1: to remind people that maybe just see a fleeting headline
Speaker 1: or a bit on cable news, that there is real
Speaker 1: pain and real lives that are being deeply, deeply affected
Speaker 1: in this moment, and all they want is a shot.
Speaker 1: As your father, my grandfather, Sebastian very much did opportunity.
Speaker 1: And you know, when I think of the long arc
Speaker 1: of our family's history, for it to end up with
Speaker 1: me in my dungeon here, it just feels like I'm
Speaker 1: not sure I've done it right, but.
Speaker 2: Well, you know it. Look, it's surrounded by memories. My
Speaker 2: dad is there, that's right, and that's all he needs.
Speaker 1: He is here, and I think he has been very
Speaker 1: much with us in this conversation, so to him to you,
Speaker 1: I thank you both, and uh to our guest Betta Rourke.
Speaker 1: The future forever uncertain, but we can try to do
Speaker 1: the right thing, Dad, I thank you.
Speaker 5: Antime, thanks, and that's our show.
Speaker 1: If you enjoy this special, somewhat unusual episode, be sure
Speaker 1: to leave us five stars on Spotify, Apple, wherever you
Speaker 1: do your listening. If you want to go the extra mile,
Speaker 1: sharing the show with a friend, sharing it on social media.
Speaker 1: All of this really helps new listeners find the show special.
Speaker 1: Thanks this week to Gina Inajosa, Eric Boseman at Star
Speaker 1: City Studio Productions, my father, and of course our guest today,
Speaker 1: betteau or Work to purchase his new book and support
Speaker 1: the work he's been doing with Powered by People, along
Speaker 1: with a bunch of great organizations mitigating what's happening down
Speaker 1: at the border. Visit our website at talk easypod dot com.
Speaker 1: If you like today's conversation, I'd recommend our episodes with
Speaker 1: Stacy Abrams to Lauras Werta, Julian Castro, Gloria Steinem, Congressman
Speaker 1: il han Omar, Congressman Maxwell Frost, Noam Chomsky, and doctor
Speaker 1: Cornell West to hear those and more Pushkin Podcast. Listen
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen.
Speaker 1: I want to give a very very special thanks to
Speaker 1: our team this week, without whom today's episode would not
Speaker 1: be possible. Talk Easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our
Speaker 1: executive producer is Jenik Sa Bravo. Our associate producer is
Speaker 1: Caitlin Dryden. Our research and production assistant is Paulina Suarez.
Speaker 1: Today's Talk was edited by Caitlin Dryden and mixed by
Speaker 1: Andrew Vastola. Our assistant editors are Claris go Vara and
Speaker 1: c J Mitchell. Music by Dylan Peck, illustrations by Chrishushenoy,
Speaker 1: Video and graphics by Ian Chang, Derek Gabrazak, Ian Jones
Speaker 1: and Ethan Seneca. I also want to thank our team
Speaker 1: at Pushkin Industries, Justin Richmond, Julia Barton, John Snars, Kerrie Brody,
Speaker 1: David Glover, Heather Fane, Eric Sandler, Jordan mc millan, Isabella Navares,
Speaker 1: Kira Posey, Tara Machado, Maya Caning, Jason Gambrell, Justine Lang,
Speaker 1: Lee Talmulan, Malcolm Gladwell and Jacob Weisberg. I'm san Fragoso.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Talk Easy. I'll see you
Speaker 1: back here next week with another episode. Until then, stay
Speaker 1: safe and so long.