Welcome to Texas Talk.

I'm Gilbert Garcia, metro columnist for the San Antonio Express-News.

On this show, we bring you one on one conversations with some of the most fascinating figures in Texas politics, sports, culture and business.

In his 2020 book American Reboot, former Congressman Will Hurd said the United States needed to, quote, refresh our operating system so that it's operating on our core values, unquote.

In June of this year, Hurd made it clear that he wants to run that operating system as an underdog candidate for the Republican nomination for president.

He's aggressively making the case against GOP frontrunner Donald Trump and arguing for a return to bipartisanship.

On tonight's show, Hurd will talk about growing up biracial in San Antonio, his approach to public service, and why he thinks he's got a chance to win in 2024.

Let's get started.

Wolf, thanks for being in Texas today.

Of course.

My pleasure.

Well, I remember talking with you in late 2020 that this was maybe when you had a few weeks left in your time in Congress.

And I got the sense at that point that you were open to the idea of running for president.

But I'm curious when this became like a serious consideration for you.

So in the 2020 election, look, I couldn't imagine Donald Trump being president again.

To be frank, I don't think I've ever told anybody this story.

And we thought it's No.

One, you know, how how can somebody beat Donald Trump in a primary?

And in 2020, it was virtually impossible.

When you look at the primary voters, when you look at kind of a unique voter, none of there is zero path of beating Donald Trump in a primary.

And that caused me thinking, okay, what would be required to do something like that?

So so the ideas were there, you know, early on for me, the, you know, sitting and and could I win?

I knew I was always going to be a dark horse.

I always knew I was going to have the lowest name, name I.D.

and the least amount of dough.

Right.

Like, I'm used to being in that in that position.

But would the message, my message resonate And would that would that would that would that pop with people?

And the day that I thought, well, something is possible in January of this year.

I got asked by the New Hampshire GOP to come speak at their convention and Donald Trump was speaking.

Donald Trump got an hour.

I got 10 minutes.

I was speaking right after Donald Trump.

And my first line was, you know, everybody's asking, why am I in New Hampshire?

I'm literally two one week into marriage.

I joked and said, this was our this was our our honeymoon.

I cried last and I said, I'm sick and tired of being lied to by our elected officials.

It was those applause.

And then I said, I'm sick and tired of being told our neighbors are our enemies and not our enemies.

They're our fellow Americans who we happen to disagree with.

More applause.

And so I went on to finish delivering my remarks.

And I was I was surprised with the positivity of the response and that juxtaposition of Donald Trump just getting up there, talking about how thousands of bald eagles, American bald eagles, are killed by by wind farms every day and you're just like, what are you talking about?

Does this relate to anything?

And then after, you know, and these are these are the most partizan partizan activists.

So if the message resonated there, it was okay.

There's there's possibility here.

But but but I think at my core, we America are faced with a number of generational defining challenges that we don't have eight years to start working on.

We have to start addressing these now.

And for me, have I done everything within my power to make sure we leave this country better off for our kids and grandkids than what we received?

And we have a very narrow window about where we can potentially be surpassed by the Chinese government as a global superpower.

So all of these things mixed in together, you know, it was the wife said she was on board.

So so we decided to do it in early 2017.

Tim Alberta wrote a profile of Politico.

And in that piece, he pointed out the challenge of getting reelected in your swing district.

And he said he described you as the future convert.

And and I think a lot of the points that you made are things that you're talking about now.

I mean, the case that you're making for yourself, who's pointing out you are a black Republican in a swing district that was more than 70% Latino, You've managed to get reelected.

You had a bipartisan instinct to get some legislation passed.

That was a time when the Republican Party was transitioning into Donald Trump or Paul Ryan, as is the speaker.

He's roundly attacked by Trump in some of Trump supporters these days.

Is the Republican Party the to over to describe you is the future of in 2017?

Is that recognizable to you now?

Is this the same Republican Party?

TRUMP that it was that.

So when I talk to people, what does the Republican Party mean?

Is it the avatar of the party who is usually the most popular person right now?

That would be Donald Trump.

Is it a collection of the national elected leaders that are from the Republican Party?

Is it the head of the RNC?

Right.

I take a vision when I talk about the party.

I talk about people that are willing to vote for a Republican.

To me, that's when you take that broad view.

Then those things that Trump heard or those things I talk about are more reflective of that group of people.

And I get asked a lot, what will why are you still a Republican?

It's real simple.

I believe that America deserves to have a sane conservative party.

And when you get down to the bulk of where people are, way more unites us and divides us.

I learned that in the 23rd District of Texas.

I've seen that and confirmed that across the country.

So.

So I am I am not a Pollyanna that recognizes that what I'm talking about doing is hard.

I know that.

I know that the extremes of the Republican Party are the ones that dominate all the conversations.

But time and time again, since Donald Trump got elected in office, we have seen and that's not a winning coalition.

Donald Trump is a loser and has not won an election since 2016.

He lost the House in 2018.

He lost the Senate in that White House in 2020.

He prevented a red wave from coming in in 2022, the night before the election in 2022.

Everybody thought Kevin McCarthy was going to come into power with a plus 30 plus 40 majority.

He had five.

Why?

Because we had terrible candidates on the ballot.

So the reality in November is that we have to grow the brand.

And there's an opportunity because Democrats and independents are sick and tired of the direction the Democratic Party is going.

So but how do you grow the party, right?

How do you get the Republican Party as as writ large to stop speaking to itself instead of speaking just to the choir?

You grow the choir.

That's what we try to do.

I think this is an issue which you've talked about.

I think you wrote about it in your book, American Reboot, which came out last year, is the the challenge of our political system.

Because what voters may call for in a general election is not necessarily necessarily reflected in the choices that our primary system provides them.

And in the case of Trump, you have this a lot of culture war rhetoric, a lot of culture war attacks.

You have what I think a lot of people would say is really a disregard for the rule of law.

But it's been a winning formula within the party, but not in the general election.

Sure.

And I can make an argument that it hasn't been a winning formula.

You know, a lot of people have tried to mimic Donald Trump and they've lost across the country.

Let's take Arizona.

Arizona is not purple.

Arizona should be ruby red.

Right.

Yeah.

Right.

And so when when the previous governor, Doug Ducey, can win by like 17 points, it's like, come on.

And so so trying to mimic Donald Trump doesn't doesn't work.

And and it comes down to this is a math problem.

Only 23% of Americans vote in primaries.

And you can split that half Republican, half Democrat.

77% of Americans think the people that are running are a bunch of jokers and morons and think it doesn't matter to them and so they don't.

So if we had more of those 77% of Americans that vote in general elections, but not in primaries, getting engaged in a primary where we oftentimes have better have better options and better candidates, you would see something that's different.

Now, I know there's some doubt that because that's how I won, you know, in 2010 when I can move back to San Antonio after not living here for 15 years, everybody was like, Who is this guy?

Right?

Nobody thought I had a chance.

I won that first round, had 900 more votes than the guy in second place.

You know, everybody was saying, well, here's the next best thing.

And then I lose the runoff by 700 votes because I made an error.

I made a tactical error.

It's real simple.

The way you win campaigns idea voters, turn them out.

But you have to have the ability to know who your voters are.

And then you have to have the organization and the infrastructure to turn them out.

And then when I won in 14 tea Party with support for my opponent, the country club Republicans were for my opponent.

My opponent was a multi-millionaire can finance himself the in the NRSC was for my opponent Ted Cruz was at the height of his power was for my opponent and I still won because guess what?

We were able to grow the kinds of people that voted in the primary.

And so that that mechanics of that road map is something that can be applied across the United States.

I'm interested in your in your your childhood and your and your families.

You've talked about the fact that you know, your mom, your your dad is black, your mom is white.

They moved from Los Angeles to San Antonio early seventies, and it took them about nearly a year, I guess, to be able to find a home because they couldn't get a realtor who would sell a house to an interracial couple in the San Antonio area.

This happened before you were born.

But I wondered as a as a kid, I mean, was this something to talk about?

How conscious were you as the kind of bigotry that they had experienced?

So so we were aware right then.

Look, I caught crap, you know, when when I was growing up, you know, my my mom was so fair skinned that, like, if she went out to the post office, to the post the mailbox, she'd get a sunburn.

Right.

And so, you know, she's she's carting around, you know, these three dark babies.

And people are looking at her like she's crazy, right?

And so we were aware of of that and even stuff that I saw when I was at high school, I went to John Marshall.

I dated a I dated a girl from Taft.

And she was very fair skinned.

And we would be at the mall, people would look at us crazy and say stuff to both of us.

But but the thing I learned about my parents, like the love in our house, was deep and strong.

And and what's fascinating is that same place.

That was hard to, you know, wouldn't sell to an interracial couple.

35 years later, you know, had their youngest son become a member of Congress representing that area.

Right.

And so that's what makes that's what makes this country so great.

And it shows how far we've come.

But we still have a long way to come.

I get the sense that your family was not real political.

And I wonder what did it what was the most curious when I talked to people who held elected office?

What was their moment?

What was that?

What was the spark for you that got you interested?

We weren't political, right.

And and so I don't remember.

You know, we we talked about things.

You know, my dad, when he retired, he sold notions, I guess an old timey word for for zippers and threads and buttons.

Right.

And when he would tie for that hill, my mom started a beauty supply business.

And so saw that started when I was in college, in high school.

And so seeing them, you know, work hard and do that, like you, you you learn from them.

My uncle had served in the military.

And and so, you know, I knew a little bit about service.

You grow up in San Antonio, you recognize how important the military is.

And then when I went to Texas A&M, I met a guy named Jeff Wilson.

I got to meet him.

The story was I applied at A&M as a backup.

I thought I was going to Stanford.

I went to do a visit, fell in love.

One of the guys I met was like, Hey, you should get involved.

One great way to learn about.

You know, get involved in campus is to help someone, help be involved in a student by president campaign.

So as a freshman, I got involved in the student body president campaign for his due name, Carl Baggett.

I thought he was like the coolest guy.

I ended up running his campaign.

He won.

And that's kind of how I got involved in student politics.

But, you know, people by and I became signed by president four years later.

But, you know, I got to know George H.W.

Bush really well because the Bush school had just started.

He was always on campus.

I got to know Bob.

President Bush would call him Bob Gates.

You know, Bob Gates, who had been the CIA director and then went on to serve and as Department Defense.

This was someone who I got to know and help, you know, and helps me in my journey with the CIA.

George W Bush was governor at the time.

Had a lot of interactions with him because of my activities and student government.

I knew John Sharp and Rick Perry.

So these are the people that that I was around.

And then when you go serve overseas.

Right, Sean, foreign policy and national security.

And what was always fascinating when I left the CIA, the number of people in the CIA that were Republican or Democrat was kind of shocking to me because we never talked about those things.

But the idea for me to run came from a friend, the friend of a friend, basically, that was, Hey, hey, Will, have you ever thought about the 23rd?

And ultimately, I ran because I got pissed because I was my job was to stop terrorists from blowing up our homeland and prevent nuclear weapons proliferators from sneaking a dirty bomb in.

And I felt like members of Congress were countering with negating what my friends and I were putting ourselves in harm's way for.

And that's where I got pissed.

And that's why I ended up running.

I was struck I think the first time you got national attention was when you were a president at Texas A&M by president.

And the bonfire tragedy happened in November of 1999.

And it was a traumatic time in a university.

And you were the person that a lot of the media looked to to speak of the student body.

And I was struck and kind of looking back on that, because you were talking about how students from the rest of Texas were kind of helping out.

And we said, you know, this is creative.

This we're not we're not what you're saying now, but your neighbor is not your enemy.

Absolutely.

Saying a lot of the same things to them.

And it just seems like that's kind of been a theme for you as well.

You know, my wife, my my, my father recently before my mother passed away, had to have some some major surgery done.

And so me, my brother and sister were taking turns staying with my mom at the house.

And before she passed away, she had serious dementia.

And so somebody had to be with her at all times.

And and my wife, this old this old envelope of, like, things I wrote and clippings that my mom took, and she laughs.

She's like, You're saying the same things back then as you're.

And that some of these these issues are are timeless.

Right?

And for me, I'm actually one of the few argues that doesn't refer to university of Texas as to you.

And part of that is because what the university did at our darkest hour I and and you know, it's crazy I think it was that long ago but it still still impacts me.

Last month, we spoke at the Lincoln Dinner in Iowa before a group of Republicans.

And you told them Donald Trump is not running for president to make America great again.

Donald Trump is running to stay out of prison.

And as they got a lot of media attention, you got some boos.

You did get some cheers as you as you left.

I'm wondering in the aftermath of that, in the weeks since then, what have you heard from Republicans?

Give you a perfect example.

I'm on the way here to to meet with you.

And I stopped at Walmart because I needed I needed some cord for something.

And I'm walking through the Walmart and two people stop me and they're like, keep speaking the truth.

Because you're right, he is running to stay out of prison.

And and so so for me, I knew what was going to happen.

But someone needs to stand up and defend the truth.

And I was there not to speak to the people that I knew were going to be me.

I was there to speak for those people that clapped and the ones that had their hands folded and didn't move but knew what I was saying was was right.

And so so for Nash, the Donald Trump is a national security threat.

Donald Trump is not going to win in November.

This this notion and every time I hold current polling and some polling has him head to head with Joe Biden, yet these were the same people that got it wrong in 2022.

Got it wrong in 2020.

You tell me the independent or Democrat that's disaffected with the Democratic Party who voted for Joe Biden in 2020.

And you know what?

Donald Trump's not my guy.

That doesn't that doesn't exist.

And so if we select Donald Trump, we're giving four more years to Joe Biden.

And then also our adversaries love this.

They love that all the conversation is about Donald Trump's baggage.

We're not talking about how is China growing their footprint in Cuba?

How is, you know, in in middle of August, we're going to see the BRICS nations, Brazil, Russia, India, South south, South Africa, China, potentially make an agreement to do all currency transactions in local currencies and non U.S. denominated accounts.

This is the whole process of dollarization.

This is a big deal.

Not one person, not one debate.

Are we having or talking about this in the news.

And so our adversaries love the fact that we're caught up in all this nonsense.

And then many Republicans want to get upset about Hunter Biden.

Hunter Biden is a national security threat when he had a substance abuse problem and the number of our adversaries that were trying to target Hunter Biden in order to get access and and to to and around his father like that is pretty that is pretty significant.

But the problem is, if Republicans want to prosecute that case, the person you don't want is the dude that's been indicted three or four times.

Right.

It makes absolutely it makes absolutely no sense.

And so it is it is frustrating for a lot of folks to think that Donald Trump is in the pole position.

There's no question about that.

But what I say is we cannot Republicans cannot just throw our hands up and say, this is this is this is what we have to accept.

No, I'm sorry, Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

I'm not the two best things that we should be do.

Two thirds of Americans do not want to see that reelection.

And so but it requires some of us to make the case and and coalesce a group of voters to be done with Donald Trump.

And the best way to be done with Donald Trump once and for all is not in a legal legal in a courtroom.

It's at the ballot box, because all these court cases are probably not going to be resolved until after the election.

So let's beat him in the primary so that we can be done with it and let the courts do what the courts should do.

You've said that both Joe Biden and Donald Trump failed to maintain operational control.

Now, one thing, as you said, was that as a solution is that we need to stop treating everyone as an asylum.

Yeah.

And I wonder what you meant by that.

Sure.

So.

So the the crisis that we're dealing with now began under Donald Trump.

And it started when Donald Trump's Department of Homeland Security treated everybody as an asylum seeker.

And what does that mean?

That means anybody who comes here is afforded the ability to go see an immigration court.

Now, asylum is a real thing.

It's a legal thing, and some people need asylum.

But to to be to qualify for asylum, you have to be part of a protected class.

That means you're being you're being discriminated against because of your race, gender, sexual identity, religion.

Is about five or I think six or seven different different things.

And then the government has to be persecuting you because you're part of that protected class or the government is not defending you from another group who's persecuting you because you're part of that protected class.

One thing in there that does not require asylum is wanting to get a better paying job.

And so when you treat everybody as an asylum seeker, what is happening?

It's not like Border Patrol is catching 5.5 million people sneaking into the country.

People are basically, you know, volunteering themselves.

When you look at what we're seeing now with people coming into Eagle Pass, trying to cross the river, obviously they're not no one's sneaking in or there's no people.

They are they're coming in.

They want to turn themselves in.

Yeah, absolutely.

How do we treat those cases?

So in those cases, if you like, we know we know around the world what countries and what groups are being persecuted by their government.

That's one of the responsibilities of the State Department.

And so, first and foremost, you know, Border Patrol right now has the ability to deport people.

So do more of that, but also streamline legal immigration.

In 2023, we should be able to term it.

Texas needs more hospitality workers or forward.

It needs more agriculture workers.

We should be able to have a big database and use AI to be like, Hey, let's let these number of people in.

So you streamline legal immigration.

Oh, and by the way, they're paying, you know, the for to get the visa that's coming into the federal coffers instead of paying a human smuggler.

5.5 million people have come in here illegally under Joe Biden.

Each one pays, on average, $10,000 to human smugglers.

That's $55 billion.

The entire U.S. intelligence budget is $60 billion.

And unfortunately, the narco traffickers and the human smugglers are the ones that have operational control of the border, not us.

And so so that was that that stopped treating everyone as asylum seeker, worked with the Mexican government on preventing some of these things from happening in the United States.

And let's treat human smugglers as terrorists.

We know how to use intelligence and military cooperation and work with the Mexican government and our allies within and within Central South America to dismantle the networks that are moving people and taking people's life savings and putting them on this perilous journey.

That's the stuff that's inhumane to me.

And then streamline legal immigration, address root causes in their countries, like in the Northern Triangle.

This is how you get this humanitarian crisis under control.

Are you confident that we're going to have a real, real discussion about the complexities of the issue?

And, of course not.

Like, come on.

Look, this is complicated, right?

We live in complicated times, and oftentimes it's hard to know what asylum, what you know, what asylum is.

Right.

And so to explain that nuance, but this is why we need people that understand these issues, because guess what?

We need to understand that.

We need people to understand artificial intelligence.

Air is going to impact every single industry, not in ten years, in two or three years.

So we need to be able to start dealing with that.

Now, 65% of Americans are afraid of the robots going to take their job.

These are the complicated issues that we need common sense.

So we need people that understand that and are not just going to say something that sounds great on an unimportant ticker everyone wants about building a wall.

There's about 76 miles along the entire border.

That requires a physical barrier because that's what is needed at that point.

Let's make sure we're using the right tool in the right place in order to solve this challenge.

Thank you so much for being on Texas.

Always a pleasure.

That's all for this episode of Texas Talk.

Thanks for tuning in.

We'd love to hear from you.

So if you have any thoughts or questions about the show, please email us at Texas, talk at KLRN.org We'll be back next month with a new guest.

Until then, take care.