Julián Castro Quotes

we can’t ignore the fact, of course, that this president is trying to suppress the vote as a strategy to rig this election and win.

This inequity in our country's education system has never stopped seeming like one of our most chronic problems.

he (Barack Obama) said, in Spanish that was pretty damn good, "Julián ha vivido el Sueño Americano." Julián has lived the American dream.

he should end this policy. If I were elected president, I would immediately end this “Remain in Mexico” policy. It flies in the face of the United States policy of allowing people who are making a claim of asylum to remain in the United States while their claim is adjudicated.

we, as Americans, are more alike than different.

What I believe is that our diversity in this country makes us strong, that we can harness the potential of immigrants, and that, for generations, immigrants, both documented and undocumented, have made this country stronger, have powered our economy, have helped ensure that we continue to move forward as a nation. And that’s going to continue to be the case in the future. And I believe that we should increase the number of people that we’re taking in as refugees and asylees, and that we should put undocumented immigrants who are here in the United States on a pathway to citizenship, as long as they have not committed a serious crime here in the United States. That’s what I would do as president.

I did not see that op-ed, but I think that Jorge puts it very well there, that — you know, that this was something that Mexico agreed to. And to me, that was surprising, given the history of López Obrador and what I thought he would stand for and do once he was in office.

I guess I would have to explain the difference between Mexican and Cuban, you know?

I think that Senator Sanders did a wonderful job. I think Michelle Obama was very powerful last night. But you’re right with Senator Sanders that — look, one of the things I noticed out there right now is that whether people are liberal or conservative, they’re Republican, Democrat, independent, what they want are solutions. And I think what Bernie did well in highlighting was this is what electing Joe Biden is going to mean for you and your family — raising the minimum wage, healthcare, a number of other things that are going to make people’s lives better. That’s what I think people want to know. You know, how is this person going to make my life and the life of my family and the country better than it is today? I think we’ve gotten to a point that because there’s so much back-and-forth on cable news, because people are so polarized, that folks that don’t love politics, that don’t follow it all the time, they sort of — they tend to shy away from it even more than usual right now, shy away from that conversation. And the best way, I think, to get their attention is to say, “OK, well, this is how it’s going to be different in a positive way.” And he did that, which was great.

Greg Abbott has been in the same boat as Donald Trump and governors like Ducey in Arizona and DeSantis in Florida. It’s this putting right-wing ideology over the public health and science. when he reopened the state in early May, he made three mistakes, reopening too early. When they reopened, they didn’t have the two things in place that public health experts tell us you need to have in place, which was robust testing and robust contact tracing. In fact, at the time, Texas ranked 48th per capita in terms of the number of tests that were happening. And then, third, when communities across the state begged the governor to be able to tailor their own safety precautions, require masks or do other things, the governor said, “No, my order supersedes you. You can’t do that,” opened up the bars and restaurants, and then basically made it worse here in the state of Texas for everybody, and has hurt the economy because of that — and admitted, for instance, that he made a mistake in opening the bars up too early. So, it’s just, you know, we can’t rely — in the middle of a global pandemic, you cannot rely on people that are putting their own political ideology and interests ahead of basic science and the public health. That is in nobody’s interest. That’s exactly what Greg Abbott has done.

I went over there, as I mentioned, there are over a thousand people. They’re all living in tents. They told me, to a person, that they don’t have clean water to drink, that a lot of the kids there are sick. I saw children as young as 12 days old, a baby that was 12 days old. They’re living basically in a field that’s right near the river, the Rio Grande river, and right next to the border station. So, these are people who are in desperate circumstances, living in unsanitary conditions, in squalor, not knowing what’s going to happen to them, and pleading for help.

College is fantastic for a variety of reasons, but that opportunity to bond with people of very different backgrounds, to pull knowledge-big and small-from such a diverse pool, is invaluable, especially in the formative years.

I mean, that’s the product of a deranged mind right there. What else can we say about that, except that’s an individual with a deranged mind and, obviously, a lot of hate toward these migrants? And, you know, this is the caliber of person that’s sitting in the Oval Office right now. It’s just one more example of why he should not be president of the United States, somebody who is not only hateful, but who is so divorced from reality that he would, on multiple occasions, bring up the idea of shooting people. It makes no sense.

I do think — I agree with you on the issue of representation. You know, last week, I think the count had been that there were 35 primetime speakers, and only three of them were Latinx. And I raised, you know, a concern about that and also, at that time, a lack of representation among Native Americans and Muslim Americans, because I don’t believe that that represents the — that represented the beautiful coalition that Democrats have put together.

what I think is important for folks to realize out there — and now I’m speaking, you know, directly to the Latinx community — is that it’s night and day with Joe Biden versus Donald Trump. Donald Trump has been the cruelest, most ill-intentioned president when it comes to not only immigrants, migrants, but the broader Latino community, scapegoated the community, otherized the community, uses it as a political piñata. And Joe Biden is somebody who brings compassion, who brings understanding, and, most importantly — because what you want to judge politicians on is, OK, what are you going to do, and what is your track record — has a track record of expanding opportunity, with Barack Obama. The Affordable Care Act expanded healthcare to 4 million — more than 4 million Latinx folks in this country. On educational opportunity, on violence against women, on housing opportunity. I remember going to Delaware with him — I think it was Veterans Day of 2016 — and marking the effective end of veteran homelessness there in Wilmington, and seeing how much that meant to him. So, this is somebody that is going to work to make life better for everybody in this country, in a way that Donald Trump — as Michelle Obama pointed out, Donald Trump just isn’t up to it and doesn’t want to do it.