- A modern, and moderate Republican takes on the GOP presidential field, this week on "Firing Line".

- Donald Trump is a liar.

Donald Trump is a loser.

And Donald Trump is a national security threat to the United States of America.

- [Hoover] One of the few GOP candidates willing to call out Donald Trump directly, Will Hurd served for nearly a decade as an undercover CIA operative, then for three terms representing a congressional district along the southern border in Texas.

- I represent more border than any member of Congress.

820 miles.

I can tell you with certainty that there is indeed a crisis at the border.

We all know this.

- [Hoover] Hurd didn't run for reelection to Congress in 2022.

Now, he's pitching an "American Reboot" for 2024, even if his anti-Trump message isn't always popular in his own party.

- Donald Trump is running to stay out of prison.

And if we elect- [crowd boos] I know, I know, I know.

- Recently even receiving boos at the Iowa GOP's Lincoln Dinner.

- Listen, I know the truth.

The truth is hard.

- [Hoover] What does GOP presidential candidate Will Hurd say now?

- [Presenter] "Firing Line with Margaret Hoover" is made possible in part by: Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, The Fairweather Foundation, The Tepper Foundation, The Asness Family Foundation, The McKenna Family Foundation, Charles R. Schwab, and by The Rosalind P. Walter Foundation, and Damon Button.

- Will Hurd.

Welcome back to Firing Line.

- It's always a pleasure to be on with you.

Thank you for having me.

- Why do you want to be the next president of the United States?

- Look, it's a great question.

We have a number of what I consider to be generational defining challenges that we're not addressing.

One of them is the new Cold War that we're in with the Chinese government.

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

That's not my opinion.

That is what the Chinese government has said about themselves in English.

And every American should care about that because it's gonna impact how far our dollar goes.

It's gonna impact our retirement accounts.

It's gonna impact our kids and grandkids ability to get good paying jobs.

We also are having to deal with a complicated economy, persistent inflation.

This century, for the last 23 years, the cost of goods and services have increased three times the average salary for an American at a time that you're gonna have technologies like artificial intelligence upend every single industry.

And that's not gonna happen in 10 years.

That's gonna happen in two or three years.

And then we've all seen these reports about how our kids have the worst scores in Math, Science and Reading in this century.

These are complicated problems.

They require common sense.

And we need to make sure that we address them.

And that's why I'm running for president of the United States.

- What qualifies you to be president?

- What qualifies me is my unique experiences.

You know, I'm the only person in this race that has actually served in combat.

I've been shot at.

This used to be commonplace when it came to people running for president, for both Republicans and Democrats.

I'm the only one that has that experience.

And my time in Congress, you know, I represented 800 miles of the border.

So when we're dealing with the humanitarian crisis, we're dealing at the southern border.

I have experience in that.

I have experience in every issue, the environment, the 23rd district in Texas, my old district, the reason we're energy independent is because of the Eagle Ford Shale and the Permian Basin, two places I represented.

But I also had the greatest concentration of wind energy and solar energy as well.

And so we can protect our environment and keep our economy humming at the same time.

And then being in business, you know, dealing with these technology companies.

So technology, foreign policy, domestic policy, nobody else has this unique set of experiences.

- As you look at the field, what did you see, or not see, in the field that inspired you to get in?

- Well, it starts with you've got to be willing to fight Donald Trump.

If you're running for president of the United States, you can't be afraid to take him on.

You can't be afraid to talk about his baggage.

You can't be afraid of the bad decisions he's made.

The humanitarian crisis we're dealing with at the southern border right now started under Donald Trump.

Now, Joe Biden made it significantly worse.

But too many people, most of my other opponents are afraid to address Donald Trump head on.

And if you're afraid to address Donald Trump head on, then you're not ready to run for president.

- Why are they afraid to address him head on?

- I don't know what it is.

And those that are trying to be a clone of Donald Trump.

You know, clones never win, especially when the original is in the race.

And let me be honest, I recognize I'm a dark horse candidate.

I recognize that my name I.D.

and and my war chest is not gonna be as big as some of these other folks.

But guess what?

This has always been the case in the races that I've run.

And I won because I showed up to places that other people didn't show up to.

I talked about things people cared about.

And that's the momentum that we're trying to build in this race as well.

- Let me offer you something for you to consider.

Could it be that those who challenge Donald Trump head on stand no chance of winning?

- So, I appreciate the sentiment, but I completely disagree with it, right?

You know, the reality is this: There are more people that would rather not vote for Donald Trump than would vote for Donald Trump.

And here's the other reality.

Only 23% of Americans vote in primaries, that's Republican and Democrat.

There's 77% of people that don't vote that are just sick and tired and don't like the options.

And so, this notion that if you upset Donald Trump, you're not gonna win, this doesn't make any sense to me.

- The words, "Will Hurd, a modern Republican," appear on the link to your 2024 presidential campaign website.

What does it mean to be a modern Republican?

- Yeah.

A modern Republican is someone that believes that the United States built an international order after World War II that benefited us, and if we don't defend that, that's going to impact us.

A modern Republican is someone that recognizes we should be able to secure the border, but we have to have humanity in dealing with the people that are coming here illegally.

A modern Republican is someone that understands that we have income inequality because we have education inequality.

A modern Republican is someone who's more interested in fighting war criminals like Vladimir Putin than discriminating against our friends in the LGBTQ community.

That is what a modern Republican is.

- The vision you just laid out is gonna resonate with moderate GOP voters.

Trump's vice grip on the base of the party has been demoralizing to moderate Republican voters.

How do you plan to invigorate them?

- Well, look, it starts with speaking truth to power and not being afraid.

You know, I had a speech impediment up until, you know, late middle school, early high school.

I had a size 14 shoe when I was in the fifth grade.

And my head's been this size since I was four years old, right?

So, you know, I have an aversion to bullies because of my experiences as a kid.

And one of the things my mother and my father always taught me is, be honest.

And the way you invigorate all those people that are frustrated, and the way you inspire the independents and the center left Dems who are sick and tired of the direction the Democratic Party is going, is by being honest.

And I was recently in Iowa and spoke at a group that had a lot of Donald Trump supporters, and I had to break the news to them that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.

Donald Trump is not running for president to make America great again.

Donald Trump is not running for president to represent the people that voted for him in 2016 and 2020.

Donald Trump is running to stay out of prison.

And if we elect- [crowd boos] I know.

I know, I know.

And some folks were not happy with me being honest.

But guess what, it had to be said.

Because if we can't have these honest debates within the Republican Party, then we're not gonna be able to ensure that this trend that has been happening for the last 20 years, where a Republican has lost the national vote for 20 years, that shouldn't be the case.

And it's gonna require us to be honest and look at ourselves.

Donald Trump is a liar.

Donald Trump is a loser.

And Donald Trump is a national security threat to the United States of America.

And we need to be honest about that.

And if we nominate him, if the GOP nominates him, then we're giving Joe Biden and Kamala Harris four more years.

- And yet in that same crowd which booed you, Donald Trump spoke and received a standing ovation.

So despite all the things that you just said, why does such a strong percentage of the base of the party continue to support him?

How do you understand that?

- If I knew that, you know, we would be using that knowledge to our advantage.

There is a percentage of the party that's gonna support Donald Trump no matter what.

But again, my campaign is not geared towards those people.

My campaign is geared towards the folks that are frustrated with the baggage that Donald Trump brings.

- You've explicitly stated that you're not gonna support Trump.

- Mm-hmm.

But the best way to get rid of Donald Trump is to beat him in the primary, and that's what I'm trying to do.

- How will you know?

I mean, if you win New Hampshire, you'll be in it.

There will be great rationale for you to continue.

But looking back at 2016, what we know, what Republicans know is that a crowded field of 16 candidates created an opportunity for Donald Trump to win the plurality of votes.

If you don't win New Hampshire, how will you calibrate the likelihood that your continued candidacy might contribute to Donald Trump once again winning the plurality?

- Well, that's where I look to the guidance of Chris Sununu, the governor of New Hampshire.

He said, you know, folks, that if by winter, if there is not a pathway to victory, folks need to start thinking about closing up shop.

I think that is valid guidance.

How many people will subscribe to that, who knows?

But I think that's something that actually makes a whole lot of sense, and something that I ascribe to.

- Let's talk about policy.

You're from a border district.

Your district included hundreds of miles of the US-Mexican border.

- 820 to be exact.

Yeah.

- You've dismissed Trump's wall idea as, quote, "the most expensive and least effective way to secure the border."

What's the best way to secure the border?

- Sure.

A physical barrier in some places makes sense.

Where there's urban to urban content, but not all 2,000 miles of the border.

So we know mile by mile on our southern border what we need, whether it's lidar, which is radar that uses light, whether it's, you know, you can lay a fiber optic cable.

So the technology we know.

But the problem is the policies that are allowing and encouraging people to come here illegally.

And it starts with treating everybody as an asylum seeker.

Asylum is real.

Asylum is a legal thing that people can apply for.

But people are abusing this process, and when people abuse this process, the folks that get screwed are the people that need asylum.

So the first thing that we have to do is stop letting people abuse the asylum process.

We should be working with our allies in the Western Hemisphere in order to have processing centers to make it easier to deport people back to their country in a humane and an appropriate way.

We also need to be tying our foreign aid to our national security policy so that we're addressing root causes in many of these places: lack of economic opportunities, extreme poverty and violence.

We can be helping address that, and it's a fraction of the cost to solve the problem there before it gets to our doorstep.

Those are things to do.

And the last thing also, streamline legal immigration.

It's 2023.

We should be able to sort out DACA.

Right?

Like, these are young men and women that have only known the United States of America as their home.

They're contributing to our society.

They're contributing to our culture.

They're contributing to our economy.

We should make sure that they have a legal way to stay in this country.

But it's 2023.

If Texas needs more hospitality industry employees or Florida needs more agriculture employees or California needs more tech workers, we should be able to determine that and have a guest worker program that addresses that.

And that is, those are the things that we need to be doing in order to deal with this humanitarian crisis.

- The Republican base of the party is very skeptical of any sort of empathy on the DACA issue or any kind of worker visa program.

- Can I push back a little bit on that?

I would say, if you're saying that the party as in the elected officials, right?

But when you look at the voters- - I think it's the primary voters.

- No, if you look at voters, like a DACA solution, about 75% of Republican primary voters are supportive of some legal way for DACA kids to stay.

But this is one of those issues where the politicians would rather use this as a political bludgeon against each other than solving the problem.

- Another issue where the sides seem impossibly entrenched is guns.

- Mm-hmm.

And when you were in Congress, you represented Uvalde, Texas- - I did.

- where 19 children and two teachers were slaughtered inside their elementary school in 2022.

You're a gun owner.

- Mm-hmm.

- But you wrote recently in The Atlantic, quote, "If my Republican Party is going to live up to its billing as a pro-life, pro parent, pro-family, pro-Second Amendment and pro-law enforcement party, then it is on us to put forth the best ideas for preventing mass murders."

You have backed comprehensive background checks, red flag laws, raising the minimum age to 21 to buy a gun, investing in mental health.

If you were president, how would you forge a consensus?

- Yeah.

So, all those things are true.

And look, I'm the only Republican candidate that's willing to talk about gun violence and how we address it.

And the stat that we don't hear enough: half of our teenagers in the United States, America, it's about 25, 30 million kids, are afraid to go to school because they think they're gonna get shot.

And that's nuts.

And so how do you build consensus on something that is politically troubling?

It starts with engaging people up front.

You know, Congress and the executive branch the last 20 years, I always say they've negotiated through subtraction.

Here are the hundred things I wanna get passed in this bill.

And the other side's like, heck no.

And then you fight back and forth and you whittle those 100 things down to seven.

- Yeah.

- Right.

How about you start with one thing and say, let's get this one thing done, and then you're gonna build a consensus and maybe get to seven.

So then everybody feels like, "Hey, there's a win win."

And so that's why it's also not being afraid to talk about these issues that are politically sensitive.

And the reason I think so many people are afraid is they don't understand the topic.

They don't understand the problem.

They don't have a grasp of what the solutions are, so they just stick to this top line talking point, and they don't wanna dive any further.

- Let me ask you about AI, artificial intelligence.

When you were in Congress, you pushed for a bipartisan national strategy on artificial intelligence.

What kind of policies and regulations do you think we need right now for the AI that you say is going to transform our economy not in five years, but in two years?

- Yeah.

So, AI is the ability to lead to a lot of unemployment exists.

Or it could lead us to higher paying jobs and a higher order of things.

But we've got to start doing a few things now.

AI needs to follow the law.

Don't carve it out.

We've made a lot of mistakes about carving technology out in the past.

Let's take social media.

What we know about social media today, would we have carved it out of the Communications and Decency Act.

No, we wouldn't have done that.

And it probably, you know, people have said, oh, it's gotta hurt innovation.

No, it's not the case.

So, we have a lot of laws already on civil rights and civil liberties.

- That you think are sufficient to regulate AI.

- To regulate AI, and say the algorithm has to follow the law, period, full stop.

- Why doesn't it?

- Because the way we look at laws and say, "oh, well, the word artificial intelligence is not written into that piece of legislation, so we can't handle it the same way."

So codifying this notion that AI has to follow the law, that's step one.

Step two: a really powerful AI system, before it can get deployed to the public, has to get a certification or a permit.

Third thing we can be doing, make sure the government is using AI.

- Yeah.

- There is no reason that a veteran should take months to get an appointment at the VA.

It should be able to be done in minutes.

There is no reason it should take months to get your passport renewed.

It should be able to take minutes.

And making sure the government is using these tools to provide better services to constituents.

And the last thing I would say, every student should be able to have an AI tutor.

Imagine.

You know, I was lucky I had a mom and dad that helped me with my homework.

Not everybody has that.

But we can solve that problem today by making sure every student, and I don't care if it's a seventh grader learning algebra or a grown man that's looking to change careers because, and I've said this earlier, we have income inequality because we have education inequality.

And we can solve that with having a tutor in your pocket.

- So you could level the educational playing field.

- One hundred percent.

That to me is what's exciting.

- You served in the CIA for almost a decade.

You were stationed for a time in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

- Mm-hmm.

- You've said that we're in a Cold War with China.

And you call Russia an adversary that's trying to erode democratic institutions.

What is our most severe national security threat today?

- The threat that could change our way of life, that can make us no longer enjoy a quality of life that has made us the envy of the world, is the Chinese government.

And I always try to be clear, it's the Chinese government.

It's not the Chinese people.

It's not Chinese Americans.

It's not the Chinese culture.

You know, the hatred that our Asian American brothers and sisters since COVID have been dealing with is unacceptable, we need to stop that.

But we have to be clear eyed about who our adversary is, and that's the Chinese government.

The Chinese government is trying to surpass us as a global superpower.

They're going to do that by being the global leader in a number of advanced technologies: 5G, AI, quantum computing, hypersonics, synthetic biology.

And as a authoritarian government, they can move all factors and production into one direction and get somewhere first.

This is the biggest issue that's at play.

This new Cold War is different from the last Cold War.

Our adversary is four times our size.

That requires us to be four times more efficient.

And so we have to deal with that.

But we also have to deal with a regional thug like Vladimir Putin, right?

We need to be helping the Ukrainians win the war.

We also have to be dealing with growing our alliances in the Western Hemisphere.

We have to deal with Iran.

We have to deal with a dictator in North Korea.

We have to deal with shifting alliances within the Middle East.

And so we have to be prepared to deal with all of those, because even though China may be the largest threat to us, it may not be the most immediate threat that we have to deal with.

And we need someone that understands these issues, and understood them at their core, and know how we can deal with it.

And that starts by doing something that I've learned being connected to national security for 22 years, your friends should love you and your enemies should fear you.

- Your candidacy helps illustrate that there's a real diversity of views about the future of the Republican Party.

And this is not the first time the Republican Party has had to do some soul searching.

In 1977 William F. Buckley Jr. Welcomed Senator Bob Dole onto the program.

He had just been defeated as Gerald Ford's vice president by Democrats Carter and Mondale.

Listen to his prescription for how to bring voters back to the Republican Party.

- You know, when you lose an election everybody has their own laundry list of what happened and why we lost, why Ford lost.

And the liberals lash out at the conservatives in our party, and the conservatives lash out at the liberals, and the net result is we're still a small group.

And every time we regroup, we lose a few.

I just don't believe we can take a litmus test in our party.

I don't think we can have an entrance examination.

We can't afford that luxury.

And I don't really believe we're gonna be a strong party by purging any one wing of the party or suggesting that they're not welcome in the party.

- It strikes me the Republican Party's not taking Bob Dole's advice right now.

What's your reaction?

- Well, we're not taking Bob Dole's advice.

We're not taking the advice of the, after Mitt Romney lost, what was that called?

- The autopsy report.

The RNC autopsy report.

- The autopsy as well.

The problem is real simple to identify.

We have to stop just preaching to the choir.

We have to grow the choir.

And that requires us to show up to places and defend our ideas, defend our beliefs.

A lot of reasons you don't have folks running for office show up to places because they're afraid to get into a competition with folks.

Their beliefs are not deeply held.

And so this is what has to be changed.

The reason America is called an experiment is because 247 years ago, nobody thought it was going to work.

There hadn't been a democracy on this planet since Rome.

And Julius Caesar screwed that up.

And there's only been 14 countries that have been a democracy for more than 100 years.

Democracy is fragile.

It always has been and always will be.

And it requires us to get engaged.

And what we need to do to make this experiment last for another 247 years does not require the level of effort that our forebears have done.

We are not having to fight on the fields of Lexington.

We're not having to fight on the beaches of Normandy.

We're not having to march in Selma or Jackson or fight hand-to-hand combat in the mountains of Mazar e Sharif.

All it requires us to do is to show up and vote, not just in general elections, but in primaries as well.

And it also requires people that are running for office to not be afraid and to show up to places they've never been in before and bring and broaden the choir.

If we do that, and if the GOP does that, then we're gonna see success not just for two years, but for 8, 12, 16 years.

And that's what I'm hoping to bring to the party.

- Well, Hurd, we'll be watching.

- Thank you.

- Thank you for joining me.

- [Presenter] "Firing Line with Margaret Hoover" is made possible in part by: Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, The Fairweather Foundation, The Tepper Foundation, The Asness Family Foundation, The McKenna Family Foundation, Charles R. Schwab, and by The Rosalind P. Walter Foundation, and Damon Button.

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