- [Announcer] Funding for
Overhead with Evan Smith
is provided in part by the Alice
Kleberg Reynolds Foundation
and Hillco Partners, a Texas
Government Affairs consultancy.
And by KLRU's Producers Circle,
ensuring local programming
that reflects the
character and interests
of the greater Austin,
Texas, community.
- I'm Evan Smith, he's
a former U.S. Secretary
of Housing and Urban Development
and a former San Antonio
mayor widely regarded as a
rising star in the Democratic
party and a possible future
candidate for president.
He's the honorable Julian
Castro, this is Overhead.
(inspirational music)
Let's be honest, is the
about the ability to learn
or is this about the experience
of not having been
taught properly?
How have you avoided
what has befallen
other nations in Africa?
I hate to say he
made his own bed,
but you caused him
to sleep in it.
You saw a problem and
over time took it on.
Let's start with the sizzle
before we get to the steak.
Are you gonna run for president?
I think I just
got an F from you.
This is Overheard.
Mr. Secretary, good to see you.
- Great to be with ya.
- Welcome back to Texas, I
guess you're living here now
so it's not really
much of a welcome back
but in some ways.
- But welcome back to Austin.
- You've been gone,
welcome back to Austin.
So here we are, I
looked it up today,
it's day 124 of the
Trump administration.
- Ah.
- Does that feel long
or short based on what
we've seen so far?
- It feels like the longest
124 days of our national life.
- Is it really any
different than you expected?
I mean, obviously, your side
going into this election,
thought you had it won,
didn't end up that way,
coming out of it, worried
your fears would be realized
and in many respects,
suspicions confirmed,
it's been somewhat
like you thought.
Has it been really though
worse than you thought?
- Oh, no doubt.
Let's start off with a caveat,
that caveat is we're only
a few months in, and
I think that Americans
of all different stripes
tend to give a president
a little bit of room to
learn and grow on the job.
- Whether they were
for him or not.
- That's right and
that's usually reflected
in public opinion polls.
- And you want him to succeed.
- Of course.
- Of course,
everybody wants the
president to succeed.
- Everybody wants the
president to be successful
in moving the nation forward
in the right direction,
of course, we have very
strong disagreements
about what that means,
but you want for the sake
of that office and the
country for him to succeed.
Having said that, it has been
a mess, unqualified mess.
(audience laughs)
You have a president that looks
like, if reports are true,
that he's abusing his power,
potentially has obstructed
justice in terms of the
investigation into possible
collusion between his
campaign and Russia,
they put together a healthcare
package that would mean
that 24 million less Americans
would have healthcare,
put forward a budget that
just decimates opportunity
for people who are low
income and even middle class.
- I think in fact every
state agency except
for Homeland Security,
Defense, and Veterans
saw a decrease in this budget.
- Yeah, it's a train
wreck of a budget.
- But practically,
it's dead, I mean,
that budget's not gonna
go in, practically.
- So it doesn't matter
who the president is,
you're not gonna get
everything that you want.
In this case, I hope that he
gets nothing that he wants.
(audience laughs, applauds)
Just to give you
an example of that,
over at my former department
at HUD, the proposal was to cut
more than $6 billion
from the HUD budget.
Now mind you, when Reagan
walked in the door in 1981,
HUD had about 16,000 employees.
Today it has less than
8000 and at the same time,
the needs out there have grown.
- Well the population
has grown, right?
- Population has grown
and the needs have grown
and this is a budget that
would cut from the ability
to provide for low-income
and middle class Americans
housing opportunity, it
also would impact things
like Meals on Wheels,
which is very popular
and make sure that poor
seniors have food to eat
during the day, and so it's a
very draconian compassionless
budget that we haven't
seen in a very long time.
- You know, there are Democrats
I've had the opportunity
to sit across from, some
Democrats including Nancy Pelosi
recently, we interviewed
her a couple weeks ago,
and she said, "I can't
believe I'm saying this,
"but I miss George Bush."
- You know, I actually
saw that, I saw that.
- And she's not the
only one to say that,
I mean, there is this idea
that somehow those of us
who thought, not myself,
but people who thought
in the Bush era, we hate this,
this is not what we wanted,
they're nostalgic actually
for a time like that.
- You know, to me,
and the budget is a
good example of this,
to me it just feels like he's
turning over the supervision
and mechanics of government
to right-wing ideologues.
I would be surprised if
President Trump actually knows
the basics of
what's in the budget
that has been proposed
on his behalf.
- You think it's
staff driving this
as opposed to his
vision top-down.
- No doubt.
- Let me make the counter
case to you, Mr. Secretary,
that there were things
about the Obama years
that needed to be fixed, that
is the case that was made
during the campaign, it's the
case that's being made now
and this budget and the
policies that have been
put into place or have been
articulated since inauguration
day are really an attempt
to rescue the country
from the brink, that
was the argument
that Mr. Trump made
during the campaign.
- Well the argument that
he made during the campaign
was that there were
forgotten Americans,
folks, for instance, who
lived in Wisconsin or Michigan
or Ohio who had been
impacted by free trade
and jobs moving overseas,
the problem is that he hasn't
lived up to his promises.
For instance, in this
budget, he takes away
economic development money
from the very communities
that he said that he
would help to revitalize.
- And in many cases,
communities that voted for him.
- That's true.
- The Affordable Healthcare
Act translates into the AHCA,
it is said that the people
who will be hardest hit
are often people
who voted for him,
in the communities
that supported him.
- No doubt, no doubt.
What folks have to
understand about Donald Trump
is that he spent the
last four decades almost
doing certain things like
railing against free trade,
railing against China,
railing against Saudi Arabia,
at one point in the 1980s
railing against Japan too,
and he gets into office and
the first thing that he does
is to say, well, maybe China's
not a currency manipulator,
and maybe we do
need NATO after all,
and no, we're not gonna scrap
NAFTA the way that I said
that we were, we're gonna go
ahead and try and renegotiate
it with Canada and Mexico,
so time after time,
not only has he gone
back on what he promised
during the campaign, he's
not even the same guy
that he was before he
went into politics.
He has turned into,
basically, Mike Pence,
a right-wing ideologue and so,
whether it's 2018 or 2020,
the decision that people
are gonna have to make is do
they trust someone who flat out
lied to them about the man
that he would be as president.
- You understand
though, Mr. Secretary,
that although his
approval ratings are lower
than most presidents over
time have been at this point,
at the end of the day, a lot
of the people who supported him
are still with him, they
actually knew he was imperfect,
that he maybe said things
that didn't square with facts
during the campaign or
that he had done things
that you would kinda
shield your eyes from,
but they still voted for
him, what makes you think
that all of a sudden now,
they're gonna break with him
when they had ample
opportunity to break with him
before and did not?
- Number one, in August
of 1974, there were people
who were still
with Richard Nixon.
- Right, it was
only at the very end
that he lost the
majority of Republicans.
- No no, I'm saying
at the very end,
when he flew out
in the helicopter.
(audience laughs)
I bet you that there
were 25 or 30% of people
who didn't think that
he should be flying out
in the helicopter, who didn't
think that he should resign.
And so let's dispense with
the idea that his support
is ever gonna go down
to zero, it's not.
Now I think the more
interesting question is,
the 10 to 15% of folks who
would determine an election.
There's very good
polling data out,
compilation of months of
polling that has shown
that the folks who
strongly support him
has diminished by 1/3.
And so he's losing those folks,
he's losing them because
people can tell it's a mess.
- So you think if the
election were held today,
he might have a
hard time winning.
- Oh, no doubt, no
doubt, and not only that,
the other thing I was
gonna say is, election,
whatever election it is, I
don't care if it's for school
board or for city
council or president
is always a match-up
between two or three people.
And he's never gonna have
the same match-up again.
- It's a choice,
not a referendum.
- It is a choice, that's right,
and so it's a choice,
there's also timing,
he's gonna have a
track record next time.
The Republicans are gonna lose
their majority in Congress
in 2018.
- Well you say that.
(audience applauds)
We don't know that,
well we don't know.
- Well I guess, Evan,
you're right, we don't know.
- These guys notwithstanding.
If you were sitting
here on November 7th,
you'd say, and we're gonna win
the presidency the next day.
- Let me just say that
if I was a betting man,
if I were a betting man, I would
put money on the Democrats.
- House, Senate, or both?
- Well keep at least
holding the Senate,
winning back the House.
- Holding the Senate
in what respect?
- Holding the seats that
we have in the Senate.
- Currently.
- Yeah, 48 essentially.
- But not winning
back a majority.
- Right now I'm not
willing to say that because
there are a couple of states
that are very difficult.
- Well the fact is
there are 10 seats
that the Democrats
have to win next time,
when they're up for reelection,
that were either in states
won by Trump or that
Trump barely lost,
so you're gonna have
to assume that those are
gonna be hard to hold.
- I think that we're gonna hold
everything that we have now.
- So you said every election
is a choice, not a referendum,
if that's the
case, is the reason
that we're in the situation
we're in now because Trump won
or because your side
lost a winnable election.
Do a little bit of self
analysis or autopsy
on what happened last time.
- It's clear that from
the very beginning,
you had a race that was
gonna be a challenge
for Democrats to win, and I
said that because the Democrats
had held the presidency
for two terms
and it's rare that you get a
third time with the same party.
- George H.W. Bush.
- That was the last person.
- Is the exception
that proves the rule.
- That's right so when
you start thinking
about the framework of that,
it was always gonna be tough.
Secondly, there's no question
that something was in the air
in 2016, populism, to a
certain extent nationalism,
this idea of America
first that Trump ran on.
- Russia.
- Russia, we don't know
what the impact of that was
or wasn't right now, but
yeah, it's conceivable
that that contributed,
of course.
So I think that the overall
dynamics of the race,
if somebody were
looking back on it,
they would say that they
were not good for Democrats.
- Easier to see now
when you look back
over the totality of it.
- And Trump was an
unconventional candidate.
He also did a very good job
of, and I think here is where
the Russian influence and
social media influences
comes into play, they did a
very good job, and by very good,
I mean effective, of
smearing Hillary Clinton.
Basically on social media,
they turned Hillary Clinton
into somebody that she was not.
I can't tell you how many times
when I would post something
on Facebook or on Twitter,
I would get back this really
virulent strain of, oh,
this person is a criminal,
she should be in
jail, I mean, come on.
- But they used the
tools available to them,
they used the new tools
particularly of campaigning.
- For sure.
- And as they say,
this stuff ain't bean
bag, it's tough stuff,
and they used it effectively.
- I think that it's
gonna be difficult
for either party to
achieve that kind of result
in the future because
I think people are,
each time folks go through
that as a populace,
they get a little bit smarter.
- So you learned from
at least that aspect
of the last campaign,
you learned about that.
What did you learn about
the Democratic message,
what the message of
your party needs to be.
If you go back now and you
look at what the message was
in the last election and
you think ahead two years
or four years, what
should the message be,
what tweaks would you
make to the message?
- I would focus a lot more on
what the policies Democrats
embrace would do for low income
and middle class Americans.
- An affirmative argument.
- An affirmative argument
instead of an argument
that focuses so much on,
this is a bad guy and
look at what our children
are thinking, watching him.
I just think that that
didn't seem to resonate
the way that folks
thought it would.
But look at his policies, look
at the fact that he's gonna
strip healthcare from
24 million Americans,
that he's making it harder
for poor senior citizens
to get some food delivered
to their doorstep,
that he's making it
more difficult for folks
who are developing
HIV in Africa,
something that President Bush
championed, supporting them,
taking that away or at
least 1/5 of that budget.
So there's plenty there that
shows that this is a guy,
who is a billionaire,
who is making policy
or suggesting policy to reward
billionaires and millionaires
in Wall Street and I would
focus a lot more there.
We need to lay out
a positive vision
for opportunity in
the 21st century,
it needs to focus on
opportunity for everyone.
If folks remember
when Barack Obama
emerged in 2007, 2008,
there was this great hope
in this sense that
opportunity would be expanded
and it contrasted very
well with the Bush years
and I believe that the Democrats
have a golden opportunity
to do that going forward
against Trump because it's so
focused on the past, it's stuck
in trickle down economics,
it's such a mess,
it's just dour,
that we have a real chance
to be something different.
- So on the subject of
Obama, I wanna look backward
before we look forward, I
wanna talk about your time
as HUD Secretary,
what did you learn,
why was this a good decision?
People say, well he's rising
up through the Democratic ranks
at least in his
home state of Texas,
he's running a city
that was then and is now
the seventh largest
city in the country,
dealing with a lot of problems
that affect people's lives
every day, he's gonna disappear
into a federal cabinet,
he goes to Washington, he
becomes part of the problem,
not part of the solution
in the rest of the country,
why was this a good decision,
what'd you accomplish,
what'd you learn?
- The satisfaction that
I got from serving at HUD
was the knowledge that
the work that you're doing
is helping to provide
opportunity for folks
who are low income, folks
who are middle class
but are willing to work
hard and are just trying
to reach their dreams
in the United States
and to go and see the country
and see what's working
and what's not, I got to visit
100 different communities
in 39 different states,
I never would have had
the opportunity to do that,
at least in the same
amount of time, as mayor.
The satisfaction of being
mayor was that you kinda have
the wind at your back,
there's a sense of community,
a pride in the city, that's
what it felt like being mayor
because things just
move much more swiftly.
The bureaucracy sometimes
lived up to its reputation,
things go a lot more slowly,
you're dealing in an ecosystem
where you're not in
command of your own ship
because Congress
appropriates your funds,
you have a whole bunch
of rules and regulations
that have built
up over the years,
but what I learned was that
when we do policy right
and we make the right
investments, that you can make
a fundamental difference
in people's lives.
The best example of that was
the Obama administration's
push to end veteran
homelessness.
Because of smart policies
like Housing First,
which says the first
thing that we're gonna do
is get somebody into
permanent housing,
not make them jump through
hoops to get housing,
because the Congress
appropriated the right resources
because mayors and county
governments out there
got on board and starting trying
to drive down
veteran homelessness.
Between 2010 and 2016, we
saw veteran homelessness
decline by 47% in
the United States.
47%, that's proof
that we can do good
when we do government right.
- Now did you talk to Ben
Carson, your successor at HUD,
about this program
or any other program,
I mean seriously, I mean
there's obviously a handoff
of responsibilities at that
agency as you looked ahead
to a new administration,
how much guidance
and what kind of guidance,
if you're willing to talk
about it, did you give him?
- We had a brief conversation
before the holidays last year,
before he took office, and
of course I offered my help
and he was very gracious, we
really didn't get into much
of a policy discussion,
I left him a short note,
there at his desk.
- Dear Secretary Carson, this
is not brain surgery, get it?
(audience laughs)
That would have been what
I would have left him.
- I will say that, to his
credit, about a week ago,
he assembled, he asked the last
four or five HUD secretaries
and their spouses to
join him in Washington
to have dinner and give input.
Now, I was not able to make
it but I did get a hold
of his office and tell him
that I'd love to give any input
any time he has a question,
any advice that I can provide
because he's in a tough spot.
- And you gotta
root for him the way
you're rooting for
the president, right?
I mean, at the end of the
day, you want him to succeed.
- His department is
being decimated in
terms of the budget,
in terms of the personnel,
also I do disagree
with the perspective
that he has on the people
that HUD serves, I don't
believe that receiving housing
assistance or other
types of assistance
necessarily makes you
dependent on government.
Now, I'm not saying
he believes this part,
but I also don't believe
that poor people are lazy,
I don't believe that there's
something wrong with the idea
of trying to help people and
my hope is that he will listen
to the many great professionals
that have been there
at HUD over the years
and know the programs,
they know the impact
that they're making,
and maybe just as importantly,
listen to all the mayors
out there, listen to the
folks that are running
housing authorities.
- Who are on the ground.
- Yeah, they're on the ground,
they're working with folks,
they see the need out there,
one program that's
up for elimination
is Community Development
Block Grants, CDBG,
and that's been around
for 43 years now.
It makes a lot of difference.
My hope is that he and the
administration will actually
listen to the need out there.
- Well of course you
were mayor and as I said,
mayor of the seventh-largest
city in the country,
San Antonio, you would
be one of the mayors
he'd be talking to so go back
now to your time as mayor.
What were the things you
took away that you would be
telling Secretary Carson
if he were asking you
about the biggest challenges
that are being faced
on the ground in these cities?
- Number one, that what the
Obama administration did,
now this is from
when I was mayor,
to encourage the mayor to
work with the school district
superintendent, to work with
the Housing Authority Director,
the transit administrator,
everybody working together
and physically take
neighborhoods that
need revitalization,
include the community
and then go step by step
trying to work at the same
time to improve the educational
achievement, to lower crime,
to improve transit options,
to try and get more jobs by
investing in small businesses,
neighborhood by neighborhood,
go to the toughest sections
of cities, one by one,
that was basically the idea
behind Promizons and we'll
see how much fruit that bears
in the future but in San
Antonio, at least preliminarily
on the east side, we've seen
that it is making a difference.
The graduation rate is
higher, crime has gone down,
there's more of a sense of
optimism in that community.
- Right.
- So it can work.
- But of course the
challenges in any big city,
not just San Antonio,
were going to be,
that's the nature of big cities,
you have a disproportionately
high number of people
without health insurance, you
have educational attainment
that may not be great
at the K12 level
or college readiness may
not be what it needs to be,
poverty is a big
issue to deal with.
Transportation, getting
people from place to place,
affordability of housing,
these are pretty significant
challenges, any one of them
would be a significant challenge
but if you're a
mayor of a big city,
you have to deal with all
of them and it's just hard
to know which to tackle first.
- Yeah, I mean I guess
so my message would be
the sooner you get to
addressing them holistically,
working together
at the local level.
- Strategy, not tactics.
- That's right,
and then the federal
government working,
there were 17 different
federal agencies working
as part of this Promizons effort
and in San Antonio,
when I was mayor,
we began working
across those lines.
So my message would be
encourage folks to look
at these challenges holistically
and you can both save money
and also have a bigger
impact and the other thing
I would just say is that
there's a whole lot of need
that is not apparent,
but is there.
The fact is that poor
people, lower income folks,
are often in the shadows,
and I'm not saying anything
profound that people don't know.
- But often they don't have
a voice in conversations
like this one.
- They do not, they do not.
They're not up there lobbying,
they're not giving campaign
contributions, they don't
have the means to any kind
of megaphone that others do,
and so I would just encourage,
whether it's Secretary Carson
or any of the other folks
in the administration, when
they do their listening tours,
which I think is a good idea,
that they also go out there
and try and listen to folks
who are actually
living the challenges.
- In some of these communities.
So are you gonna run for
president at some point?
I mean, I may as well just
ask you straight away.
There's speculation about your.
(audience cheering)
There's speculation
about your intentions.
There were many people who
believed that we might see
what I thought of as
a Patty Duke moment
at the top of the
ticket in Texas in 2018,
with you running for
governor and your brother
running for the Senate,
O for two on that.
But then people naturally
go to the next opportunity
for you to decide to
get back into something
and that might be
an election in 2020,
well it sounds like every
Democrat in the country
is talking about
running so why not you?
- I've said very clearly
that I'm not taking that
off the table, that I'll look
and see how things develop
over the next year or so
and then make a decision
as to whether that's
something that I wanna do.
- If someone in your situation
were going to do this,
what would the case
be for a former mayor
and former HUD
secretary as opposed to.
- You don't think I'm
that dumb, do you, Evan?
Come on.
(laughs)
- I don't think dumb is a
disqualification, candidly.
(audience laughs, cheers)
- That's a good point.
- You've got a bunch of
United States Senators
who are in significant
positions, you've got governors,
you've got people who
are doing big things,
being mayor of San Antonio or
HUD secretary is not nothing
but what about the
job appeals to you
or what about you
might appeal to them.
- Well, first of all,
that is not something
that I've made a decision to do.
- I'm not suggesting you have.
- And may well never.
- We're living in a
land of hypotheses here.
- I would just say that
a lot of attention has
been focused on this
Make America Great Again
and the word in that phrase
that sticks out to
me is the word again.
Because this entire
administration is
just looking backward
and I feel like that
we need a vision
that is forward-looking,
that we need to embrace
the 21st century and that we
need new blood at all levels
that is going to be
bold and really set out
a positive vision for
expanding opportunity
instead of pitting
people against each other
and scapegoating folks the way
that this administration has.
And so whether somebody's
running for mayor
or for governor or
for president, I'm
gravitating toward
people like that and I recently
just endorsed a fellow,
Andrew Gillum, who's the
mayor of Tallahassee,
that's running for
governor of Florida,
Colin Allred who actually
worked with me out there at HUD.
- Former NFL player who's
running for Congress in Texas.
- NFL player, lawyer, just
a terrific, genuine guy
who is also young, who's
running against Pete Sessions
in the 32nd Congressional
district of Texas.
So I don't know how
much that adds up to
or whether the, what the sense
is gonna be in 2018 or 2020
and whether I run or not but
my sense is that this country
is looking for a
vision for the future,
not a vision for the past.
- Is there anybody
at the national level
who is talking about
running, if it's not you,
who you look to and you
think, the kind of person
I'd be comfortable supporting,
who I would be interested
in supporting
potentially is, blank.
- I think there are
plenty of folks.
There are very talented
folks from Elizabeth Warren
to Cory Booker,
Kirsten Gillibrand,
that's why sometimes
I read this,
in Politico or some of these
other commentary news sites,
this idea that the Democrats
don't have a bench.
- You think the
bench is pretty good.
- Oh for sure.
- In fact there are perhaps
two dozen people who are
talking about running,
that feels like a
pretty deep bench.
Whether they win or not.
- And again, as I said,
at the end of the day,
it's a choice that
folks have to make,
and so you don't need
a perfect person,
what you need is somebody
that has the right values,
that has the right experience,
has the right vision,
and then folks are
gonna make a choice,
I assume it's still gonna be
Donald Trump but who knows.
- You know, we're living in
a who-knows world, aren't we?
Right, when will you decide?
- Probably next year.
- Okay, well then you come back.
- Yeah.
- Okay.
Mr. Secretary,
thank you very much.
(audience applauding)
- [Announcer] We'd love to
have you join us in the studio.
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- One of the first
things that I told people
when I walked in the room was,
yeah, I'm asking you
to raise your taxes
and it's gonna cost
you $7.81 a year
so that we can fund these
22,000 low income students
to get high quality, full
day pre-K over the next eight
years and then people can
see what we stand for.
- [Announcer] Funding for
Overheard with Evan Smith
is provided in part by the Alice
Kleberg Reynolds Foundation
and Hillco Partners, a Texas
Government Affairs consultancy,
and by KLRU's Producers Circle,
ensuring local programming
that reflects the
character and interests
of the greater Austin,
Texas, community.