Podcast: Will We See A Blue Wave?

TRANSCRIPT: Will We See A Blue Wave?

Congressman Joaquin Castro:

Racial resentment is like psoriasis. It can go away, and it seems like it's not there, but when somebody picks at it, it can become the most prominent thing around.

Ian Bremmer:

Hi. I'm Ian Bremmer, and welcome to the GZERO World Podcast. I'm host of the weekly show "GZERO World" on public television, and in this podcast, we share extended versions of the big interviews from that show. Let's get to it.

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Ian Bremmer:

Congressman Joaquin Castro, thank you so much for joining me today.

Congressman Joaquin Castro:

Yeah, thank you for having me.

Ian Bremmer:

So how much is the Democratic Party actually changing if they take the House? If you guys, I should say, take the House coming up, is it going to be different?

Congressman Joaquin Castro:

Yeah. I think what you'll see is basically a lot of issues-based clashing with the White House. I mean, I think that as we've been talking amongst ourselves, people want to make sure that it's not just fighting for the sake of fighting or fighting based over personalities, but fighting on issues. So on the immigration issue and trying to get us to comprehensive immigration reform, on raising the minimum wage, on environmental standards, things where we have legitimate disagreements with where the president and this Republican Congress have taken the country. So that's what we're going to focus on if we get back the House.

Ian Bremmer:

Now, there was an agreement between the Dems and the Republicans on a budget, for example, where I mean, I remember Chuck Schumer saying this was a place where the two sides could come together. I mean, it's not like Trump was a Republican for very long. Do you think that in some ways he's going to be easier to work with than other presidents might be if you end up in a majority?

Congressman Joaquin Castro:

Yeah, that's a great question, and actually, it's a tough question to answer because this president has been so unpredictable in his approach and in some ways, kind of erratic. So it could be that he's going to be a Republican president and if there's a Democratic Congress, that he finally becomes the deal maker that he is professed to be. But it could also be that you have this interesting clash where the president uses the Democratic Congress as a kind of foil, and politically he's very good at using people and things as foils. You think about the fact that he's still bashing on Hillary Clinton, for example. So I don't know. I don't know for certain which way he'll go, but I've got to suspect that it's probably the latter, that he's going to try to make political hay out of what Democrats try to do in Congress.

Ian Bremmer:

So unemployment right now is as low as it's been in my lifetime, since 1969. How's the economy feeling in Texas right now?

Congressman Joaquin Castro:

It feels as though we've almost achieved full employment when you talk about it in economic terms, but it also feels to many people as though their careers and their lives and their jobs have stagnated, as though their wages are not going up very much. A lot of people don't see a career in the jobs that they're in or room for growth in those jobs. So when I talk to people in my hometown of San Antonio in my district, there's still a lot of anxiety about the future. Maybe they're able to pay the bills, they're able to put food on the table, but where is this all going five years from now, 10 years from now? Will I be able to earn significantly more on the course that I'm on?

Ian Bremmer:

Immigration issue. On the ground in Texas. You come from immigrant stock yourself, and not so long ago. Your grandmother, if I understand.

Congressman Joaquin Castro:

Yeah, my grandmother came here as a six-year-old orphan in 1922.

Ian Bremmer:

Immigration issue is, I mean, on the one hand, an enormously explosive one. Can blow up in your face. Both sides believe they have absolute truth. How do we possibly bridge that divide?

Congressman Joaquin Castro:

I think there's basically two core components, I think, to a successful agreement. On the one hand, because it's a compromise, you're going to see increased border security of some kind. Now, I don't believe that should include a wall, but it would include some kind of increased border security.

Ian Bremmer:

It does include a wall already, does it not? I mean ...

Congressman Joaquin Castro:

You're right. There's part of basically fencing in Texas and other parts that does, and President Trump has been essentially trying to do as much as possible to add new wall or new fencing. But the border security part is one part. And then the other piece is very likely a path to citizenship for Dreamers, for example, our DACA recipients and their parents who have, some people that have been here 20 or 30 or 40 years, but are still undocumented. So I see those as the two pillars for an agreement. I think eventually that we can get there. I just can't tell you honestly how long it's going to take.

Ian Bremmer:

Are you seeing very stark divides inside Texas between districts that are saying, "We don't want any of these immigrants in here," and others that are saying, "Wait a second, this is us we're talking about," or is it more integrated than that?

Congressman Joaquin Castro:

Yeah, I mean, you'll get the range of opinions in Texas, everything from very liberal to very conservative or right wing. But I think the average Texan, perhaps more than other places in the United States, understands the value of immigration and immigrants, and not just from Mexico. I mean, in Texas there's a long history of Germans and Czechs and Irish who immigrated, the Vietnamese to Houston after the Vietnam War. So it's a state and a place that understands the value of immigration to the economy and to the culture of our state.

Ian Bremmer:

When you're at full employment, does that make people more welcoming, less threatened, or the fact that people are concerned about their economic future, as you suggested, means that it doesn't matter, they're still saying, "Wait a second, we just don't want anymore coming in"?

Congressman Joaquin Castro:

Yeah, I think that's what has complicated it, is that, yeah, the unemployment numbers are very low. So you would think, okay, folks have a job. They don't feel threatened necessarily. But as I mentioned, people also feel oftentimes like they're in a dead end, like their job is not necessarily a career that they're going to grow into and start to earn more money with. And then the president's rhetoric, of course, doesn't help. Unfortunately, in our nation's history, I mean, look, race and immigration are some of the thorniest issues that you can talk about, and racial resentment is like psoriasis. It can go away, and it seems like it's not there, but when somebody picks at it, it can become the most prominent thing around. And in many ways, that's exactly what the president did in 2016. And as a country, we have to find a way to come back together.

Ian Bremmer:

So you seem like a nice fellow.

Congressman Joaquin Castro:

Thanks.

Ian Bremmer:

But you're clearly part of the problem, right? You're a congressman.

Congressman Joaquin Castro:

By being in Congress.

Ian Bremmer:

You're in Washington. Yeah. I mean, why are you guys so screwed up? Why can't you fix this?

Congressman Joaquin Castro:

Oh, man. That is a great question. I mean, yeah, the politics obviously have become more partisan. Part of it is that the institution is built for fighting. The institution of Congress itself is built for fighting. It's not built very well for cooperation. I think that some of that needs to change. Some of these are formal rules, but also informal rules. You've got people from both parties that sit on separate sides of the chamber, separate sides of committee, hardly or ever together for any kind of debate. There's no permanent seating on the floor of the House of Representatives, so everybody's a nomad, basically. I realize that what I'm saying is not going to solve every single problem here or suddenly make people the most united that you'll find, but when you reach a point where we have in our country where things do get very divided, then you need to use every tool available to try to bring people back together. And I think it's time that we examine the institution of Congress, the Senate, but mostly in the House of Representatives, to try to do that.

Ian Bremmer:

So now that there's a NAFTA agreement that at least has been approved by the governments themselves, that the Europeans and the Americans are negotiating rather than expanding tariffs on automobiles, for example, does that make you feel more comfortable that we're heading in the right direction vis-a-vis China?

Congressman Joaquin Castro:

It does actually. I have been saying since President Trump took office, and he was clear as a candidate and as president that he was very critical of NAFTA, and Texas does the most trade of any state in the nation. So NAFTA's been very important for us. But it was fair to take a fresh look at the agreement. I always saw the renegotiation of NAFTA as a bellwether as to whether this administration would be willing or able to pursue other free trade agreements, multilateral or bilateral, because there's talk of doing one with Japan now. So to the extent that he can seal the deal on this, then I think that it may be a good sign that perhaps there's more to come and that these trade agreements will be improved upon what they once were before.

Ian Bremmer:

So what I'm hearing from you is, this deal comes down in Congress 2019, you'd be an enthusiastic vote in favor of passing the new NAFTA.

Congressman Joaquin Castro:

The improvements that I've seen so far are promising. It just came out recently, so I've got to go do my due diligence and talk to my constituents and businesses in San Antonio, and of course labor. But yeah, I mean, it looks like they've made some good improvements on it.

Ian Bremmer:

I want to ask you about Russia. Maybe one question is, what do you think we should do in response to what has been seen as Russian engagement, interference in American domestic affairs? Which we had a hard time dealing with under Obama, and we're having a hard time dealing with under Trump. I know you discussed this in committee.

Congressman Joaquin Castro:

Yeah.

Ian Bremmer:

What do we do?

Congressman Joaquin Castro:

There's a few things that we need to pursue right away. The first one is domestic. I was surprised to learn that there is not a single federal law that requires even a basic level of cybersecurity protection for our election systems, for the counties or states that administer our elections, and I can't find a single state law, although there may be one out there. So we have to get our own house in order and establish a basic standard, work with the half dozen vendors who sell these electronic voting machines, get a paper trail on there so that we can verify how somebody has voted if necessary, and with their permission. So that's one part.

Congressman Joaquin Castro:

The other part is we need to move closer, and I just saw this recently that NATO is doing this, and the United States seems to be committed to it, moving closer to mutual cyber defense. The ability together as countries, close allies, to respond in concert if necessary, when one of our countries is attacked, and having both a defensive cyber capability and an offensive cyber capability. Now, in some discussions that I've had with folks from other countries, especially when you start talking about offensive capabilities, they tend to get a little bit nervous, and they think that you might mean, well, if they interfere with our election, we're going to launch a missile over. That's not what I'm describing. What I'm describing is the best cyber defense, but also being able to respond if necessary offensively in cyberspace.

Ian Bremmer:

What would one do? I mean, interfering with Russian elections is not exactly useful as a cyber response.

Congressman Joaquin Castro:

No, you're right. I wouldn't necessarily see that as a response, but I think that there's a mutual response in terms of denial of service in other ways that we can affect commercial traffic in countries with our own cyber capabilities. And just like you have sanctions that are applied to a country, I think in the same way you could have cyber sanctions that are applied to these countries.

Ian Bremmer:

Are you worried that, I mean, if the United States starts denying service that you end up creating by default or moving even farther towards an alternative system? We already see that Chinese internet, for example, really is very different and controlled by different companies, different data centers than we have in the United States. Do you think that we're heading-

Congressman Joaquin Castro:

That we would hasten that if we-

Ian Bremmer:

Yes.

Congressman Joaquin Castro:

Yeah, that's definitely a concern. I mean, that's something that we've got to take into calculation. But I also know that we can't simply let Russia or another country be so aggressive in messing with our elections, interfering with our elections, and then lay down and basically do very little. I know that we've done sanctions. We've sanctioned individuals and so forth, but as far as I can tell, there's no indication that based on what we've done so far, that Russia's going to stop doing what they've been doing.

Ian Bremmer:

If the Dems take the House, what do you think the House is going to look like? What's the judiciary committee going to look like, in terms of investigations around Russia and more broadly? You're surely talking about this with your colleagues.

Congressman Joaquin Castro:

Well, we started to, I mean, we can't be too confident that we're going to take back the House, but we also don't want to get caught flat-footed. You don't want to get to January and say, "Okay, guys, what are we doing now?" So we've tried to make sure that we're prepared. The first thing, as I mentioned, this is going to be an issues-based approach. So for example, in Puerto Rico, there's been no real investigation about what happened in Puerto Rico, what happened at the border with the kids that are being separated from their parents, and the accounts of at least one death and some serious injuries that have occurred. So it'll be very much investigations, but issues-based investigations that are where the outcome should be better public policy.

Ian Bremmer:

How do we think about Russia issue-based investigations?

Congressman Joaquin Castro:

Part of that depends on where Bob Mueller, I think ... This is my own. We've got nine members of the committee, Democrats and certainly our chairman, Adam Schiff, if he's chairman at the time, and our Speaker would have the final say on it.

Ian Bremmer:

He's been very vocal on this issue. I mean, he's burning up cable news every morning.

Congressman Joaquin Castro:

He's definitely been one of the messengers out there. Yeah. I mean, so in terms of Russia, part of it I think depends on what happens with Bob Mueller. Does Bob Mueller by January deliver a comprehensive report to Congress that answers a lot of the questions that we've wanted answers to? I think that might affect our calculation on how we go forward. But right now, based on what I'm seeing, there's still a lot of unanswered questions. I mean, you think about it, the House investigation, the committee didn't issue a single subpoena for travel records, for bank records, for phone records of any of these witnesses. So it was basically a 'take them at their word' investigation. So you'll see us go through, and on all of these significant and meaningful unanswered questions, that's where the investigation will pick up, I believe.

Ian Bremmer:

Now that you're a full-time politician, what are you enjoying most about this?

Congressman Joaquin Castro:

I mean, I still just love representing my hometown. That's a big part of the reason that I got into politics is basically to try to serve people. When the government works right, it can still help create opportunities in people's lives. I still fundamentally believe that.

Ian Bremmer:

And you see a long career for yourself, God willing, in public service?

Congressman Joaquin Castro:

I don't know. I'm going to keep doing this for a few years, but I don't think I'll be around doing it in 20 years. There are other things that I want to do with my life.

Ian Bremmer:

You heard it here first, Joaquin Castro, not for president.

Congressman Joaquin Castro:

You could put that down. That's for sure.

Ian Bremmer:

So few people willing to be on public record. Thank you for that.

Congressman Joaquin Castro:

Thank you.

Ian Bremmer:

Good to see you, my friend. Thank you very much.

Congressman Joaquin Castro:

Thank you.

Ian Bremmer:

That's our show this week. We'll be right back here next week, same place, same time. Unless you're watching on social media, in which case, it's wherever you happen to be. Don't miss it. In the meantime, check us out at gzeromedia.com.

Announcer:

The GZERO World is brought to you by our founding sponsor, First Republic. First Republic, a private bank and wealth management company, understands the value of service, safety and stability in today's uncertain world. Visit firstrepublic.com to learn more.