Julián Castro Calls on Congress to Impeach Trump: “This President Is Hiding Something”

“He doesn’t want the American people to understand the scope, I believe, of his misdeeds.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIq_4DrnVno
Democratic presidential hopeful Julián Castro told Mother Jones last week that he’s still preaching patience—even though he’s recently been polling at around 1 percent in a crowded field.

“There are 21 candidates in the race, and I believe that at different points people are going to be up and down,” Castro said. “And my goal is not to be up for a month or two. My goal is to steadily build this campaign so that we’re strong when it counts—which is in the winter and spring of 2020.”

Castro spoke with Mother Jones for an exclusive interview at one of his favorite restaurants in San Antonio last Thursday. He was upbeat and on message, emphasizing that the best was yet to come and hammering home his top policy priorities: pushing universal health care with Medicare for All, addressing climate change while investing in sustainability, and putting forward “bold immigration legislation” that would give millions of undocumented immigrants a legal path to citizenship.

Listen to immigration reporter Fernanda Echavarri interview presidential hopeful Julian Castro in this week’s episode of the Mother Jones Podcast:

He also called on Congress to move forward with impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump. “Robert Mueller in his report cited 10 different instances where this president obstructed justice or tried to obstruct justice,” Castro said. “It’s a mess, and it’s a mess because this president is hiding something—and he doesn’t want the American people to understand the scope, I believe, of his misdeeds.”

He said not impeaching the president would give the American people the perception that Trump’s “got a clean bill of health, when that’s so far from the truth.” 

“Probably the worst thing he’s done is undermine our democracy with so many lies, outright lies,” Castro said. “This president has undermined our democracy in ways that I don’t even think we’ve completely accounted for yet but that we’re gonna be living with, I believe, for well past his term.”

Castro, who announced his run for the Democratic nomination on January 12, says he spoke to former President Barack Obama the day before. “He gave me some great advice, but his main point was just be yourself,” he said. “More than anything else, people want to know who you are, so don’t be afraid to be yourself.” 

Castro served in Obama’s Cabinet as secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 2014 to 2017. Before that, he was the mayor of San Antonio, a blue city in a red state, which he says is helpful in today’s divisive political environment. 

“What people are looking for in part this year is somebody that can talk to folks that don’t agree with him, somebody that can try and bring people together around progressive values and that’s basically what I had to do as mayor of San Antonio,” Castro says. “I had to go knock on the doors of Republicans and conservatives and a lot of them didn’t vote for me, but some of them did, and even though we disagreed I found ways to work with them to do progressive things.”

Castro, the grandson of a Mexican immigrant, grew up in San Antonio, a city he still calls home. His mother, an activist involved with the Chicano movement of the late 1960s and early ’70s, was instrumental in getting him and his twin brother, Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro, into politics. He’s grateful that his mother gets to see him run for president “because in some ways it’s fulfilling the hope that my grandmother had for her family, and that my mother had—not only for her family, but for improving the system.” 

That optimism is pushing him forward in the face of low poll numbers, which he insisted aren’t discouraging his campaign. 

“I’ve said that I’m not a frontrunner right now, but I wasn’t born a frontrunner—I didn’t grow up here on the west side of San Antonio as a frontrunner,” Castro told me. “And there are a lot of people out there that are not frontrunners. They don’t feel like frontrunners right now.”

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate