(bright music) - [Speaker] I am a mother of five.

- [Speaker] I really didn't see myself being able to go back to school.

- [Speaker] There was a lot of self-doubt.

- [Speaker] Cost of higher education, that was a big hurdle for me.

Once I found Amazon and all their free education programs, I was hooked.

- Amazon's footing the bill for it, so we're gonna take advantage.

- [Speaker] I'm able to work towards a degree in computer and electrical engineering.

- [Speaker] Network engineering.

- [Speaker] Environmental engineering.

- [Speaker] It makes me feel confident I can get to the next level.

I feel like the sky's the limit.

- [Presenter] Thank you for joining us for the Crosscut Ideas Festival.

(bright music) Before we begin, a special thank you to our title sponsor and politics track sponsor, Amazon.

We'd also like to thank our founding sponsor, the Kerry and Linda Killinger Foundation.

- Hello and welcome to the Crosscut Festival.

My name is Brandi Kruse.

I am a Seattle-based political reporter and commentator.

I spent eight years at the Fox affiliate in Seattle before leaving in 2021 to launch the "unDivided" podcast.

"unDivided" is a podcast for people left, right, and center who are searching for common sense solutions to the challenges we face.

And I am thrilled to be joined today by former congressman Will Hurd.

Will worked as a CIA officer before being elected to represent Texas's 23rd Congressional District for two decades.

He's been involved in the most pressing national security issues, challenging the country, whether overseas in dangerous places, in the boardrooms of international businesses, or in the halls of Congress.

Hurd is a native of San Antonio and a graduate of Texas A&M University.

His recent book is called "American Reboot: An Idealist's Guide to Getting Big Things Done".

In the book, he argues that America is in need of a reboot.

He believes that the country is facing deep challenges, including political polarization, income inequality, and changing technology.

And he believes that those challenges can only be solved by Americans working together.

Will Hurd, welcome and thank you for joining us today.

- Hey, Brandi.

It's awesome to be here.

What's up, Seattle?

Sorry I couldn't be there in person.

And welcome to everybody else who's not from Seattle that's watching.

- So you were recently in Iowa, which can only mean that you wanna be president, right?

Do you have anything to tell us today?

- Well, I'm not breaking any news today, Brandi.

But the reality is, we can't continue on this trajectory that we're on.

We live in complicated times.

And as you said in your open, we need common sense solutions.

I've been fortunate to have been connected for over two decades to national security and to have been able to serve my country in a lot of different ways.

And I'm not ruling out serving my country again at some point in time in the future.

- So what are you weighing in order to make that decision?

- Well, I think anybody who's thinking about running for office, you need to figure out, is the willingness there, right?

You know, running for office is difficult.

I quit a job that I was really good at, in the CIA: recruiting spies and still in secrets and preventing, you know, terrorists from trying to blow up the homeland and Russian spies from stealing our secrets and weapons, nuclear weapons proliferators from trying to sneak a dirty bomb into the country.

And to be frank, I got pissed with the caliber of our elected officials and decided to leave a job I was good at and move back to my hometown and run for Congress.

And I thought I had a sense of how difficult that was gonna be, but that willingness is there.

You gotta have the right ideas, right, and see, do those ideas resonate with folks?

Also, there's gotta be a moment to be met.

And to me, I think the lessons of 2020 and 2022 is the country is trying to tell us that, hey, number one, don't be a jerk and don't be a socialist; and number two, have common sense ideas and solve problems, right?

And those were the lessons.

Unfortunately, I think both parties have not learned those lessons.

And so I think the moment is there, I think the country is ready for something different, and I think that needs to be tested.

- So the title of this session is Republican Reset.

Obviously we're gonna spend a lot of time talking about the Republican Party, where it's at, where maybe it needs to be.

But I joked with you before we started when we were back in the green room that this, you might be the only Republican, some people watching, hear from all year long.

So I want you to introduce your brand of conservatism to the Seattle audience.

- Look, I appreciate it, Brandi.

Look, I have a real simple philosophy, right?

Show up and talk about important issues, right?

Don't be a jerk, don't be a misogynist, don't be a homophobe, right?

These are simple things.

You know, I was lucky.

My dad and mother met in Los Angeles, and they met in 1969.

They got married in 1970 and moved to South Texas in 1971.

My dad's Black, my mom's white.

And what they had just gotten, it just become allowed to have an interracial marriage only four years earlier.

My dad was a traveling salesman.

He sold notions, right?

That's like an old-timey word for zippers and threads and buttons.

And he was on the road Monday through Friday, and then he would come home and my mom, you know, after they had three kids, decided to buy a house.

The only place they were able to find was the place where they ended up living for 50 years.

It was the only place that would sell a home to an interracial couple, right?

And then fast forward 35 years, their youngest son represented that area as a member of Congress, right?

And the things that I learned from my dad, work hard, you know, show transparency.

These are all the things that I learned, you know.

I think strong foreign policy.

The United States became a great nation, not because of what we have taken, but because what we have given, right?

And we built an international order that benefited us.

And that's why when it comes to things like Ukraine, we need to support the Ukrainians against the Russians, right?

And so I do believe that small government matters.

I do believe in a federalist society and that you should have local control.

Unfortunately, many in my party don't think about that.

They only want local control when it's, you know, they are controlling things the way they want it to be done.

That's kind of against our principles.

But if I had to boil this all down to a simple formula, right, it means freedom leads the opportunity, opportunity leads to growth, and growth leads to progress, right?

And ensuring those things happen is how we make sure this experiment continues to work.

- Well, we're gonna be touching on some of the issues you brought up there.

Ukraine, if we've got time a little bit later.

Also, this dilemma with local control that there sometimes lacks moral consistency on.

But we were thinking about how we can ingratiate you further to a Seattle crowd.

So we're gonna start with a question, not about Republicans, but about Joe Biden.

What is something, Will, that you think Joe Biden is doing right?

- Look, I think his mannerisms, right, like, you know, not being, I don't think anybody's gonna say he's a jerk, right?

And I think his openness to try to have dialogue and conversations, I think that's something that we should expect in our elected officials, and especially in our president, and I think that is such a contrast from our previous president, and I think one of the reasons that Joe Biden is actually in office.

So I would say that is something, and look, I got to work with him a little bit when he was in the Senate and when he was vice president.

- Yeah, it's interesting you bring that up 'cause I think that that's something, unfortunately, that Americans, some Americans, have let go of is, you know, being willing to vote for people they wouldn't even wanna be friends with or wouldn't even wanna go have a drink with.

It's just a very odd thing to me.

Let's talk about the Republican Party.

We mentioned your book, "American Reboot", the title of today's session is Republican Reset so kind of similar themes there, do you believe the Republican Party is in need of a reset?

And if so, what does a reset look like?

- Well, it is, it needs a reset.

That's why I wrote the book, right?

I think one of the problems that the Republican Party has is when you look at the three largest growing groups of voters: women with a college degree that live in the suburbs, people from Black and brown communities, and folks under the age of 35.

The brand is terrible and, you know, people don't identify it with us.

When you look at that younger cohort, it's pretty disturbing how bad that trend is of the Republican brand.

And so for me, you know, I call it "American Reboot" because, look, my degree is in computer science.

And my freshman year in college, I worked in a computer lab, right?

This was in 1995.

And when I was troubleshooting a problem and ran out of all my tricks, what did I do?

I reset the machine, right?

I rebooted the machine.

And somehow it always worked.

And so to me, this is not about doing something drastically different or changing our government, it's getting back to those original principles.

Get to that fresh instance of our operating system that led us to where we are today.

And, you know, you made a comment earlier, and the way I would say this, this lack of ideological consistency, right, is something that I think frustrates a lot of folks and the willingness to engage with other people.

The district that I represented when I was in Congress, it was 29 counties, 2 time zones, 820 miles of the border, it took 10 and a half hours to drive across it at 80 miles an hour, which was the speed limit in most of the district.

And unfortunately, at the time, one of my, you know, kinda my political Sherpa, who is now my wife, she learned the hard way that the speed limit was not 80 in all of the district.

And it was a district that was 72% Latino.

Nobody thought that a Black Republican would be able to win in a Latino district that had been Democrat.

And what I learned, and I showed up to places that had never seen a Republican, you know.

People show, like, it was like, I felt like I was in a zoo sometimes, right?

It was like everybody would show up and be like, "I wanna see the Black Republican."

And guess what?

Like, we talk about the same issues.

Whether you're in a ruby-red district or you're in a blue town, people care about the same things: put food on the table, roof over their head, make sure the people that they love are healthy, happy, and safe.

And when you talk about those issues and willing to engage and potentially disagree, but have that engagement, then people appreciate that.

And look, preaching to the choir is easy, right?

Anybody can do that.

But taking a message that folks don't necessarily identify with because of the negative brand association was a little bit harder.

But when you do it, people appreciate that kind of outreach.

- You mentioned though, you know, 'cause the brand is so bad, and I think that there are Democrats in Seattle who, like some of what Republicans have to say about crime, for instance, about public safety, about lower taxation, but there is that feeling that, "Oh, but I can't vote for a Republican."

What do you think is so inherently bad about the brand right now of the party?

- Well, look, I think there's a number of things.

Like, one of the titles in my book is "Don't be a racist, don't be a homophobe, don't be a misogynist," right?

And I think some of that nastiness, right, and again, part of that is because there have been people that have done those things, a former president being one of them, and that has exacerbated this problem.

And so I would agree with you.

The actual opportunity in 2024 is that Independents and Democrats are as frustrated with the Democratic Party.

They just want someone that they're like, man, that I feel like is an okay person.

Like, I think there's this weird debate sometimes where we think that you can't have someone who's a nice person and have good ideas at the same time.

Those two things aren't mutually exclusive, and we should expect that from our elected officials.

So I would agree with you.

And why is that brand bad?

Is because sometimes we're afraid to go into other areas and talk about things, people we're afraid.

Look, the fact that the extremes of both parties have a disproportional influence on the parties is a problem.

And the reason we have that problem, it's a math problem.

92% of House seats, of seats in the House of Representatives is decided in the primary, right?

Last cycle, there was only 32 seats that were considered swing districts, right, where one party could win.

And usually that's defined by that district voted for one party or president, the other party for Congress.

So that means only 8% are decided in the general election.

And guess what, the average number of people that vote in a contested primary, whether it's Republican or Democrat, is about 60,000 people.

So that means 30,001 people decide 92% of congressional seats.

That's insane.

That's 4% of the population.

And those are the only people many of our elected officials are talking to.

Because guess what, it's easy.

Those are the people that usually vote.

It's hard going out and talking to people and engaging in a competition of ideas.

But that competition of ideas is what has made this country the greatest country on the planet.

And when we get away from that and show that we're afraid to do that, look, we're seeing kinda right now the two leading contenders for 2024 talking about not doing debates, right?

Like, come on, this is a hallmark of our democracy.

What are you afraid of?

Are you afraid of making a gaff?

Are you afraid of something's gonna be used against you because you don't believe it, right?

Like, so part of this is, you know, being able to, you know, not, the original question was about the brand, right?

It's lack of ideological consistency, it's meanness and pettiness, and it's because a handful of people have hijacked the image of the party.

- Yeah, and I wanna get into who is among the handful of people.

But, you know, you mentioned the importance of, you know, of conflicting ideas, of people being exposed to that and working their way through that.

And one of my big complaints in Washington has been, I just don't think one party rule is healthy.

I don't think that it brings the best ideas to bear.

And for that reason, you know, gosh, I'd like to see some Republicans be able to win at least the House or the Senate.

So there's a little bit of divided government.

But there is the Trump problem.

Trump is a terrible brand in Washington State.

The polls have said so over and over and over.

And so even though you have a Republican Party in Washington that I think is more moderate than the National Party, is fair to say, they really struggle with being associated with the Trump brand.

How would you suggest that Republican candidates in Washington state try to differentiate themselves?

- Don't be afraid of disagreeing, right?

Like, guess what?

I'm sorry, 2020, Donald Trump, the election was not stolen.

He lost, full stop, right?

Donald Trump lost the House in 2018.

He lost the Senate and the White House in 2020.

And because of him, we failed.

This red wave did not materialize.

And we had the lowest gains of a party out of power, in power in the history of our country, right?

And so Donald Trump is not gonna be helpful.

And he's preventing, he's gonna prevent us from taking advantage of what we already talked about, that the center and center left are frustrated with the Democratic Party.

7 out of 10 Americans do not want Joe Biden to be the Democratic nominee, right?

That's an opportunity if we put the right person up.

But guess what, Donald Trump?

6 out of 10 people don't want him, right?

And so what would I tell folks in Washington state, Republicans in Washington state?

Do what I did in the 23rd district: show up, talk to people, right?

Engage in that conversation.

If you're afraid to engage in a conversation, then maybe you need to rethink your opinions, right?

Because if you're not willing to allow that to be tested, and if you're afraid of like having to say what is orthodoxy or what I think this person that follows conservative media is supposed to say, then you'd be wrong.

Start with what you believe in and then be able to be willing to articulate that.

And that's how you grow.

And the only way you build trust, trust is over time.

And what I found when I was this, you know, people are like, "Who is this guy," right, "This CIA guy," right?

And I would show up and people would be like, you know, they were just staring, and they would all ask me, "Why are you here," right?

And then the second time I showed up, people would actually shake my hand.

Third time I showed up, people would walk by and someone would whisper, "I'm a Republican," right?

And like the fifth time I'd show up, people would tell me their problem.

And the sixth time, when I was like, "Hey, that problem, I remember," I helped sort that out and do it.

Then the eighth time, people would come pat me on the back.

And so it takes time.

And you can't solve this problem overnight.

You gotta show a willingness to engage.

So go to those places that you shouldn't be afraid.

Look, there's a town in my old district called Eagle Pass.

It's on the news now.

We talk about the border issue.

And they didn't even have a Republican primary 'cause there wasn't that many Republicans.

I think the Republican, the previous year I won, had only gotten 2%.

I knew I was never gonna win that area, but I showed up anyways and I continue to get larger margins.

Now, I never won that area, but I still was supposed to represent it.

- So I wanna move on to some specific policy conversations and how they're framed by the Republican Party, what's a winning discussion, what's a losing discussion?

But on the broader issue of what's going on within the Republican Party, it's fair to say there is still a chunk of the party that likes Donald Trump and that wants him to be the president again.

And so when it comes to some of the Republican in fighting that we're seeing, it is almost like the pro and anti-Trump factions, how much of that is healthy and how much of it is self-destructive?

- Well, I always like to say, "Look, if you want, groupthink," right?

Like, the Republican Party shouldn't be about groupthink.

We should be open to a diversity of ideas and thoughts and opinions.

And that's one thing that's been the hallmark of the Republican Party.

So don't be afraid of it, right?

And so is this good?

That debate is okay.

But ultimately, the key is this is about voters.

You know, people always say the Republican Party, what does that mean?

Is that the sum total of the elected national officials that identify with the Republican Party?

Is it the actual RNC, which is an organization?

Or is it all the people that would potentially vote for a Republican?

I take that broader view of the people that potentially vote for a Republican.

So, you know, the way you win elections is, the formula is not complicated.

ID your voters and turn them out.

That requires a level of effort and an engagement.

And so that's, what I would say, the people that wanna see something different.

Only 23% of Americans vote in primaries.

That's terrible.

That's a terrible number.

In 2020, 67% of people voted in the general election, okay?

That was a high-water mark.

But in that same election, only 23% voted in the primary.

That delta of that 40 plus, those are the people we need to be talking about and encouraging them to vote in primaries.

'Cause I don't care whether you vote in Republican primary or the Democratic primary.

There's always better choices in a primary.

Now, I'm gonna assume that people that are coming to a Crosscut Ideas Festival are probably, actively, and engaged and probably voting primaries, but we need more people voting in the primaries.

And when we do that, we can ultimately see better outcomes.

And so this fight, this internal fight, is usually for, what I call the professional political class, say, is debates.

These are the people that come out to vote over and over.

And again, debate's always better.

Competition of ideas is always okay.

We should have these debates.

But this brand of Trumpism, I think the only way it gets beat is it's gotta get beat in the primary, right?

It's not gonna be in a court case, it's not gonna be, you know, anywhere else.

It needs to be be broken in the primary.

And those that care about this and wanna see something different are gonna have to vote in primaries.

- Yeah, and I think you're right about who comes to, who attends a Crosscut Festival.

Those people need to get 10 of their friends informed and to vote in the primary.

We'll get to some specific policy issues, but I wanna remind all of you who are watching at home that we're gonna be asking some of your questions so make sure to enter them in the chat section on your screen and we'll get to them for the last 10 to 15 minutes of today's chat with Will.

Again, we're joined by former congressman Will Hurd.

There have been some, I would call 'em the culture wars.

I'll talk about the culture wars a little more broadly, but transgender issues, you know, transgender athletes, critical race theory, these are all things that I think there is a big segment at the Republican Party that believes that, if messaged correctly, those are winning issues.

Do you believe that those are winning battles for the Republican Party that they should be focused on ahead of 2024?

- Well, I think they think those are winning issues in a primary, but they're not necessarily winning issues in a general election.

Now, there are some nuance in all those, let's take the critical race theory issue, right?

Like, guess what, slavery happened, right?

Jim Crow happened.

Racism happens, right?

My parents could not live in any neighborhood in San Antonio, Texas in the '70s.

And the neighborhood we ultimately lived in was, did not have the best schools.

Now guess what, I turned out okay, right?

Because I had a loving family, and great brother and sister, and awesome friends, and a community, right?

But I didn't have the opportunity to go to the best schools because of legacies of racism, right?

But the way you teach racism and Jim Crow and slavery is by not putting a bunch of fifth graders and segregating them based on their hair color or their color.

That don't make no common sense, right?

Like, you can talk about it, right?

You know, don't send those kids home with a piece of paper that says, you know, "Rate whether," you know, "you have," you know, "how privileged you are," right?

Like, that's not how you do that, right?

And guess what, but education is important.

We should make sure that we're preparing our kids for jobs that don't exist today, right?

Our kids are not staying, we're not giving them the tools to stay up to speed with their peers and other nations, right?

Like, that's a scary trend.

We're still dealing with the aftermath of school shutdowns post-COVID and the impact that it had on learning.

Look, I'm a proud product of Texas public schools, but I also believe in school choice.

And here in Texas, there's been a 20-year longitudinal study on school choice that shows Black and brown communities have eliminated the achievement gap between their white peers in school.

That's why you have a lot of Democrats, Latinos and Blacks, that are supportive of school choice in Texas.

So education, for sure, is a winning message, but let's talk about making sure our kids are ready.

Look, y'all are in Seattle, right?

Like, you know, we know the amount of tech companies that are there.

The technological change that we're gonna see in the next 40 years will make the last 40 years look insignificant.

You know, everybody's talking about AI and generative AI and the impact that's gonna have, that's gonna have tectonic impact on jobs.

We need to make sure our kids are ready for that.

So that is 100% a winning issue.

Cinderella and Mickey Mouse, they're not gonna be on a ballot so I don't know why we're fighting with them.

And we shouldn't be trying to force or use government to punish companies for using their first amendment rights to be supportive of something that the government doesn't believe in.

So, look, also, you talk about the transgender issue, right?

Yes, like in elite sports, somebody who was born as a male probably shouldn't compete with women.

But transgender kids in high school, most of them are probably not even drinking liquids during the day because they don't wanna have to go to the bathroom, right?

We should be able to figure out how these kids can use the teacher's lounge to use the restroom, right?

So, like, we should be able to come up with common sense solutions to these things, and we should be making sure that we don't discriminate against anybody.

And oh, and by the way, we should be open to everyone, right?

So to me, there's an opportunity in all those issues if we're focusing on that right issue where people are like, "They want common sense," right, to solve complicated issues.

- That's the thing.

You know, and as an independent voter, you know, I typically have a little split ticket, although it has been harder and harder for me to find Democrats that I'm willing to vote for in this day because I feel like they've gone a little far to the left.

But on the transgender issue, just as an example, you know, with the transgender athletes, I feel like we've devolved into this very Black and white conversation.

Either you have this one side that I think is being cruel to people.

Matt Walsh had this really horrible video about Dylan Mulvaney, you know, the TikTok influencer that I thought was incredibly unproductive.

And then on the other side, you can't even ask a legitimate question about whether it makes sense for, you know, a biological male to compete against a woman or you're a transfo.

And so I guess, from an independent voter perspective, how can Republicans message in a way that is allowing those conversations to occur without vilifying people, but, you know, isn't being cruel about it?

- Sure.

And I think, you know, you don't vilify, you state a common, you know, what the actual thing that you're concerned with, but don't show, don't be mean towards the folks that are on the other side.

And the point is, you're absolutely right.

The reason that Democrats and Independents would be willing to vote for a Republican that they actually liked is because the far left has gone too far on some of these issues.

And so, again, it's an opportunity.

But you can't be afraid of it and you have to be honest.

Look, I was one of, I think it was four, it was either four or eight Republicans that voted for like the equality act.

And it basically just said, "You shouldn't discriminate against people in the government."

Like, why is this hard, okay?

This shouldn't be hard.

And so I think, like, part of this is people are afraid, right?

I think oftentimes, as many Republicans that agree with me on the things that I say, but they're afraid to say it out loud because they don't want, you know, because of hyper-partisanship, if the first thing out of your mouth is not a complete and total rebuke of the other side's crazy idea, they're afraid that they're going to be tarnished by that particular issue, right?

And so, you know, you see it in so many of these issues that we're talking about now.

You see it in immigration, right?

Nobody wants to talk about, you know, straightforward common sense immigration rules because they're afraid they're gonna be like, "Oh, someone's gonna say I support amnesty."

Like, just because you wanna streamline legal immigration and do the other things that we should be doing, does not mean you support amnesty, right?

And so oftentimes I think too many Republicans are afraid that having a nuanced position may look at it as an acceptance of the crazy other person position so they harden their response to these topics.

- Well, I also wonder, though.

Where can those nuanced conversations exist?

I mean, at the Crosscut Festival, obviously.

But certainly not on social media.

I would argue also not on cable news.

So when we talk about, I think there's a lot of people like you who would wanna have those nuanced conversations, but I don't see a lot of places that platform them.

- Look, agreed.

But here's what I'm saying, there's multiple trends that are happening.

Yes, it's hard to put all this stuff in 280 characters, right?

If I said crazy things, my social media footprint would be 10X what it is today.

But I don't say crazy things, and I have discipline not to say that.

Oftentimes I have to do a four or five tweet thread to get a point across.

And guess what, it's not as (audio warps) and it doesn't trigger the algorithms the way some pithy, you know, statement does, right?

And you're right about cable news.

But we're also seeing the rise of podcasting.

Look, you know this better than anybody, a longer form conversation.

You're seeing that interest when you're seeing the, at the same time attention span's decreasing, but also increasing.

The number, and the podcasting revolution, is really showing that.

I think documentaries are having a golden period right now.

So there are folks that are craving this, but it's hard, right?

And those formats and those ways have a, you know, there's more of them, which means they have a smaller footprint.

And so to get that message out and talk to those people, it's difficult, but it's gonna require us to stand up and do that care about these issues.

You know, the first time there's a conference in Austin called South by Southwest, and it started as a music festival and a movie festival, and then, you know, they have all kinds of stuff now, it's like three weeks long.

And I got invited to come speak, this is my first year in Congress, and I was on a panel of a bunch of YouTube stars.

And the combined, the other four panelists had half a billion subscribers on YouTube, I had 67, like legitimately 67.

And I'm like, "Why am I on this?

Why am I on this stage?"

And I'm assuming like 30 of those people are probably watching us right now.

And one of the people that was on this was a woman who's the digital director for the Rock, Dwayne Johnson, and this was when the movie "Moana" came out.

And she said, she asked, she goes, "Okay, if 'Moana' comes out and it fails at the box office, are we gonna blame the movie and say it's a crummy movie?

Or are we gonna blame the moviegoers, the consumers and blame them for not coming in the movie," right?

And we all knew what the answer was.

We were gonna say it was a crummy movie.

And now I'm not saying "Moana" is a crummy movie.

I think it's a very delightful movie and I think it won a number of awards.

However, she's went on to say that politics is the only industry where we blame the consumer, the voter, rather than the product.

And the reason that we only have 23% of Americans coming out to vote in primaries is 'cause we got a bunch of terrible product out there and people aren't wanting to go see it.

But it's hard, right?

And so it requires people that care about this to get involved.

It requires those of us that have the ability to take the slings and arrows, right, to get out there.

And it requires us as individuals to mimic the behavior we wanna see.

And I'll close with this, Brandi, I didn't mean to go on, but you got me worked up.

I guarantee, if everybody watching this video could raise their hands, and I asked them, "Have any of y'all ever clicked on an article that said 'Congress worked'," nobody would raise their hand 'cause nobody's clicked on that, right?

But I guarantee you, everybody that's watching this, probably knows three or four outrageous things that George Santos has done and lied about in his life, right?

So are we mimicking the behavior and modeling behavior that we wanna see?

And so part of that is us making sure we're showing that kind of behavior.

- Yeah, it's a great point.

Okay, I wanna get into some audience questions.

And there are some good ones that have been submitted, which does not surprise me.

This question, "Is there a viable strategy to move beyond Trump?"

- Yes, there is.

And it starts with this realization.

When 70% of the country thinks the country's on the wrong track, that is something that has been growing and started under Trump's tenure.

You also have, it's more than 50%, I wanna say it's 58% of Democrats, 55% of Republicans, about 49% of Independents, think that democracy is gonna fail to exist, right?

This was something that happened, this was a polling from last summer, and those numbers give me, you know, somebody can probably fact check that, but it's plus or two.

That's an outstanding show of bipartisan despair, right?

People want something different, right?

And so is there a way to move beyond this?

Absolutely.

Because the opportunity is with those Independents and Democrats we keep coming back to.

And that means talking about issues people care about.

It means talking about how are we gonna ensure that people are able to move up the economic ladder?

You know, the economy is one of the most important things on most voters' mind every single year, and now we're potentially 30 days from defaulting on our debt.

You know, I have to spend a lot of time in New York now and when I talk to people up there that are in high finance, nobody thinks that we're gonna default on debt.

Like, it's impossible for that to happen.

There's a lot of people in Washington, DC that would love to see that happen.

And the impact that that would have immediately on our 401ks is crazy.

This decoupling of the dollar that is happening around the world should scare most people.

And the Chinese government is trying to surpass the United States of America as a global superpower.

And one of the way they're doing that is trying to ensure that currency exchanges that happen between companies, countries, excuse me, doesn't happen in dollar-denominated accounts.

That helps us in a big way.

And by the way, we've set that up after World War II to benefit us, right?

And so these are these real issues.

Income inequality is a real issue and something that's impacting most folks.

So when we talk about those issues and explain it to people in a way and how it impacts them, then I think we can see a change.

So I believe it, but it's also gonna require people that are willing to get engaged in primaries and get their friends to do it and support candidates that are doing those things that you wanna see happen.

- Just because you alluded to it there, there was a question about what your approach would be to the current debt ceiling situation.

- Look, so engagement matters, right?

And I think President Biden, and I think his tunes changed a little bit after Secretary Yellen said that, "We're like 30 days before all hell breaks loose," pardon my language.

And so you gotta engage.

So we're 34 trillion in debt.

We are spending 1.7 trillion more dollars in what we bring in.

We can't spend more money than we make, right?

One of the things that we should be doing is when the Appropriations process comes around, that's how you fund the government.

Nobody talks about, "Well, how many tax, where were the tax receipts that came in last year," and let's only program up to that number, right?

I think there's things like letting the government set a budget over four years or two years, right, over a congressional district.

So you get rid of this thing in government, and everybody knows, it's funny, whenever I'm in a crowd and I say, "If you don't use it, you lose it," and everybody knows that phrase and how the government does purchasing that way.

We waste a lot of money that way.

And if you had two or four-year budgets, you would remove that incentive and then you would see an incentive to potentially save, have some cost cutting to have a more efficient government.

Then you'll also have to increase the pie, right?

And so economic incentives, we shouldn't be injecting more federal dollars into the economy.

That's what's fueling inflation.

When you fuel inflation, the note on our debt increases.

So more money goes that, and crowd's out, how we can spend money.

Look, streamline legal immigration, stop treating people, everyone coming in the country, as an asylum seeker.

Asylum is very specific.

We can get into that if you want.

(clears throat) But if we streamline legal immigration, every industry needs workers.

So you would have more people coming in, paying taxes, doing all those things.

So there's multiple things that would need to happen to do this, but it starts with conversations.

And in this environment right now where there's a ticking time bomb, you gotta engage and figure out how you come to some kind of compromise.

- Yeah, I like this question because I think this can be a blind spot for Republicans, but it's an issue that's very important to voters in a place like Seattle and a state like Washington.

"What are your thoughts on the environment and climate change?"

- Climate change is real, and people are having an impact on our environment, right?

But having climate change prevention and US energy, energy independence, are not two mutually exclusive things.

When you look at about 770 million people in this world do not have electricity.

There are about 2.4 billion, with a B, that don't have clean cooking, right?

Like, people that don't have clean cooking mean they're cooking with wood and coal or animal dung in their houses, right?

Like, that's crazy.

That's almost a third of the entire global population that don't have clean cooking.

So the need for electricity and proper energy is always gonna increase.

By 2050, Americans are gonna probably need to double the amount of electricity that's happening, right?

So we can see, you know, moved renewables, you're seeing it.

The reality is actually most, when you look at the top six states that have renewables, most of them are Republican-controlled states, where you're seeing that renewables are part of the energy mix.

This is a problem that can be solved.

This is something that's gonna require ingenuity and creativity.

It's also gonna require things like nuclear energy in order to have this mix.

But we could, we need to have a mix of all of the above strategy when it comes to the kinds of tools that we need, and we gotta be able to solve this.

And this is another reason why voters under the age of 35 have a hard time voting for Republicans, because they don't feel like we take the environment seriously.

- I like this question.

It's very kumbaya.

"Who is a Democrat you admire?

And who is a Democrat that admires you?"

- Well, I would hope that would be the same question.

But, you know, I always get mad when, I always get in trouble when I say this.

But my boy is Pete Aguilar, right?

And I use that as a familiar term, and a friend.

Pete Aguilar is the number three in the House.

He is from California, used to be the mayor of Burbank, just a smart guy, thoughtful guy.

I got to know him because we worked together on dealing with immigration.

We worked and had one of the, probably one of the few most recent bipartisan pieces of immigration legislation in a really long time.

We came two votes away from actually dealing with this issue.

So Pete is one.

And guess what, how did we become friends?

By having debates and conversations.

He was thoughtful, he was smart.

I trusted him, he trusted me.

We could have open and honest conversations without trying to burn each other.

And that's how we were able to build a relationship.

And look, you know, there's a lot of Dems that I worked with and served with because, you know, we talked and we had conversations.

And I would go to them and be like, "Hey, explain this thing to me."

Look, I got 22 pieces of legislation signing the law in six years.

That's more than what most people do in two decades.

And part of that is 'cause I always started with having a democratic partner on the House side, and then making sure you had a Republican and Democrat in the Senate side.

And that's how I was able to build those relations.

I gotta say Robin Kelly, too.

Robin Kelly is a Democrat from Chicago.

A lot of the AI legislation I did when I was in Congress was with my friend Robin Kelly, and she's a dear friend.

And I would hope, I'd hope both Pete and Robin, whoever asked that question, would you go on their social media?

- We'll ask them.

- And be like, "What is your opinions about Will Hurd?"

I wanna see what they say.

- We'll ask them and we'll let you know, okay?

Just so you know who your friends are.

- For sure.

- I just wanna end on this because we just have a minute left, Will.

You know, this is called Republican Reset.

For that reason, I mean, we're diving deep into some problems with the Republican Party, but there are some issues with the Democratic Party.

You know, it would be foolish not to acknowledge that.

You know, in Seattle we look at our homeless crisis, the crime rates that are going up, the taxation, you know, the situation at the southern border, which is completely out of control.

So when it comes to getting voters, particularly voters in the middle, the movable middle, to recognize some of the shortcomings of the Democratic Party and their ideas, what is the best way for Republicans to do that in 2024?

- Look, just restate what you just said, right?

I'm paying more taxes to have more crime, more homelessness, right?

Like, it is not humane.

The way that many Democratic governors and mayors are dealing with homelessness is not humane.

And that we should be trying to help people not be on the streets.

You know, this issue of the border, 2.5 million people came in the country illegally, that we know.

That's basically two San Franciscos, right?

The drug trafficking organizations that moved people into the country made at least $25 billion, right, with a B. Starbucks, right?

I think their market cap is $23 billion.

So human smugglers made more money off of human smuggling and bringing people in the country into the United States illegally than Starbucks made on lattes, right?

Like, this makes no sense.

Or kids' education, they're not getting the tools they need to compete with their peers.

This is a problem and this is why people are frustrated with the Democratic Party.

And what I would say to other Democrats is there are Republicans that ain't crazy, right?

That have your interests and needs in mind, and are willing to engage in a competition of ideas.

There's a few out there, okay?

Like, I wish there was more, right?

But again, the only way that we're gonna make sure that this experiment called America continues for another 247 years, the way it's done over the last 247 years and help most Americans increase their quality of life while uplifting all the humanity is if we have this competition of ideas.

Because one of the things I learned from my time in Congress, all the major peace legislation that we can recite and has made things better, we pass them being working together.

We are a better nation when we're together, we're better together, and that's what we need from our elected officials.

- Well, Will, I wish we could talk to you for hours.

You're fascinating.

You're such an interesting guy.

We are out of time for today.

We'd like to thank everyone who joined us in the audience and those who submitted questions, for being part of the Crosscut Festival.

The honorable Will Hurd.

I'm sure you cringe when people call you that.

I'll give you the final words, sir.

- Well, look, thank you for the time.

And I think I said this before.

One of the privileges I had was serving my country.

And what I learned being an overseas in dangerous places and dark alleys, is that America became an exceptional nation not because of what we've taken, but because of what we have given.

And we have given the rest of the world a model.

And when we remember those timeless principles, we will be able to be better together.

I believe our best days are still ahead of us and that just requires us to do a little bit of work.

I know y'all vote in primaries, but go get those 10 friends, as Brandi said, and make sure, and this is how we create change in this country.

- All right, former congressman Will Hurd, thank you so much.

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