CNN Newsroom: Interview with Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX)

Interview

"Well, I'm glad that they're talking. Their conference, the Republican conference has been in chaos the last few weeks with folks like Matt Gaetz and others threatening to make a motion to vacate to remove Speaker Kevin McCarthy and other threats as well. So I'm glad that they're finally talking among themselves and trying to come to an agreement.

Now, because this news just broke, I have not seen what they're proposing. I do hope that we can avoid a government shutdown. In 2013 when Republicans shut down the government back then, it was very, very costly to millions of Americans. So I'd like to avoid that this time.

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Yes. I mean an impeachment inquiry is obviously a very serious thing that shouldn't be taken lightly. And Republicans are upset about things that the president's son has done and are trying to hold the president accountable somehow by proxy. And so they haven't provided any evidence that President Biden has been involved in any wrongdoing. Every time you hear them talk they talk about the actions of Hunter Biden.

Well, you can't -- you're not going to hold a president responsible for what his son does. And so I'm not surprised that they're pursuing impeachment. They were upset that Democrats pursued impeachment against Donald Trump. Well, Donald Trump, himself directly, first tried to extort Ukraine and then secondly incited an insurrection, an attempted coup at the United States Capitol. And so his personal actions led to him being impeached, and of course he didn't get convicted in the Senate because Republicans protected him.

But those two things, what they're describing with Hunter Biden and what Donald Trump actually did himself are not comparable at all. But, you know, again, they're spending time on impeachment because it's a substitute for taking real action on the things that matter to Americans in their own lives, whether it's the economy and jobs, health care, education, immigration, whatever it may be. They have no policy solutions for those things, so they do this instead.

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You know, I think that former President Trump can face the music. He's got four indictments now to answer for various crimes, and he'll have his time in court to explain why exactly he took the actions that he took.

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Yes, it's wrong for young kids to be separated from their parents. It doesn't matter who the president is, whether it's a Republican or Democratic administration. It traumatizes kids. Now, I do think we need to make an important distinction here. What's being described as a separation of kids and parents at a facility, what happened under Donald Trump and Stephen Miller was that at the border, kids were ripped away from their parents and were not told where their parents were.

The parents were not told where the kids were being taken, et cetera. So both of those things can have obviously very negative and traumatic effects on the kids. But what Donald Trump and Stephen Miller did was essentially rip away kids from their parents without telling either of them where each was or where they were going.

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Yes. I mean what they need to do is come to Congress and ask for the money to be able to process people as quickly as possible and get them to those home sponsors. Remember, most of these people are on their way to stay with brothers or sisters or other relatives in, you know, whether it's in Maryland or any state across the country. So most of them have a place to go.

The system has to be set up to process those people quickly, not keep them languishing in a shelter somewhere else for a long time, and move them to that place so they can wait for their court hearing to come up.

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I mean I wasn't -- I guess I wasn't surprised, although it's weird because I wasn't surprised, but there's still a part of me that's just fundamentally shocked that even when presented with plain, compelling evidence, that a group of legislators, elected officials who are supposed to respect the rule of law and serve their constituents, wouldn't be able to do the right thing and for various reasons.

First, I think they were afraid of getting primaried. Donald Trump Jr., before the trial started went out on Twitter and talked about RINO hunting season. These few Texas billionaires who control the Texas Republican Party spent about $3 million or more on -- not only on a contribution first to the lieutenant governor, but then on ads to support Ken Paxton. And so in that environment, it became, I think, people having to choose their career and also, for some, their personal safety rather than voting to do the right thing.

And the result we have is that you have an indicted attorney general who is probably the most corrupt attorney general in the country, who will remain in office and go back to serving as attorney general.

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Good to be with you.

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