I'm very pleased to be joined by Texas Congressman Colin Allred. Congressman, welcome.
Thanks. Thanks for having me.
You are running for the US Senate from the great state of Texas. If you become the Democratic nominee, you will be facing off against Senator Ted Cruz. Why are you the guy to beat him?
Well, listen, I think that Texans know that we can't afford six more years of Ted Cruz in the Senate. And Americans should know that we can't afford six more years. Ted Cruz in the Senate -- he's our problem, but he's also the country's problem. We know that he's only looking out for himself here in Texas. Everybody knows that about him. Ted Cruz is on Team Ted. I have a very different story, one that's based on being raised by a single mother, who was a public school teacher and having to rely on my community, my teachers and my coaches, my local YMCA, to chase my version of the American dream. And that led me to Baylor to be captain, the football team, five years in the NFL, went to law school and served in the Obama administration. I then ran for Congress against a 20-year incumbent Republican who had been unopposed in the previous election because he was considered to be so unbeatable as the chairman of the Rules Committee. And we beat him by seven points. So we know how to do this. We know how to appeal to folks who maybe feel like this version of the Republican Party doesn't reflect their values anymore. We want to make sure that we tell the story about who we are as a people. And I think we're not who Ted Cruz says we are. That's what this race is going to be about fundamentally -- that Ted Cruz wants to divide us. He wants to pit us against each other. He's a demagogue. I'm somebody who's spent my life and career trying to bring us together around our shared values. And I think that's why we're going to win.
Let me ask you a question. And I want to frame it, not by asking you. through the prism of Congressman Allred, I want to back up, or walk back up to the young man raised by a single mom, supported by his community, at the YMCA, who winds up as the captain of the Baylor football team, and winds up playing in the National Football League. The values of being on a team, leading a team, the concept of responsibility. Where did you learn it from? Where are your seminal experiences? What was that moment in your life where someone imparted to you, "hey, it doesn't matter if you didn't do it, you're in charge. You're responsible for what goes on here," and then how do you think about this moment? You're sitting in Congress and your state senator, during a crisis in the state, people have lost their electricity, and he goes to Cancun. So you're sitting there thinking, "What about this guy as a matter of character?" I'm curious about who you are, where you come from, and how you think about what I would feel is a fundamental and elemental issue in the country, which is this crisis of character?
Well, I want to thank you for that question. Because I think it's an illuminating one. So I grew up, and I never met my father. I had to find male role models. And also find some of the values that I think young men in particular, are looking for. I think we're in a difficult time, as a country, as you said, around accountability, and around responsibility and leadership. We're also in a really strange time around masculinity and where I think young men are learning their lessons from. I was fortunate because I had so many men who stepped up in my life, from my uncle, who was my mom's sister's husband, who helped raise me like a father and was the guy who was at every game of mine. He was always there. He's been a huge part of my life, to YMCA counselor Derrick Smith, who is the former college basketball player who was in my launch video, when I ran for Congress. We've been friends since I was seven years old, to the coaches who I think went above and beyond, to recognize that there might be some potential in me and to try and bring it out. I wouldn't be who I am without them. We're not for football. I say that as somebody who understands better than anyone, some of the downsides of football. I mean I was severely injured. That's why my career ended is that I had to have neck surgery. I have a plate and two screws in my neck, so I understand the downside of it, but I also understand the upside. What it teaches you about accountability, which is a word that is just absent to Washington right now, but also to our politics. I mean, you want to talk about accountability in a football game, we used to always say "the eye in the sky doesn't lie." The next morning, we're going to watch tape, we're going to roll it back, we're gonna do it in slow motion, we're gonna talk about who did what, who didn't do what, and we're going to hold people accountable. So in that moment, because of that there's no boasting and lying. And this idea that you would just try and get by on what people can't prove because it's all right there, I came from that -- that kind of a world where you're going to be held accountable, but also where, particularly if you're in a position of leadership, and I was a captain of my high school team, my college team, I became a leader in the NFL before my career ended, where you have other talented young men looking to you for leadership. And what in my experience, what they're looking for isn't the most blustering person, isn't the person who takes all the credit, but doesn't put in the work. What they're looking for, particularly in football, is somebody who's accountable, who holds himself accountable first, before they hold anyone else accountable. Who is the hardest worker in the room, and why you're following them, in part, is because you want to be like them. You want to take that work ethic they have and apply it, and learn how to use it yourself. But also I think it's somebody who can understand the differences in people and appeal to people in different ways at different times. On a football team, we come from so many different backgrounds, and the NFL was hilarious to me. So you'd have a country kid who would never really set foot inside of a city almost sitting right next to and being brothers with somebody who had never left the inner city, right? And it happens every day in a football locker room. And we don't see that in the outside world too much, unfortunately, because we have so many of these narratives about the differences that we have, whereas I've seen the similarities that we have. When I think about Ted Cruz, the word that does come to mind is accountability. He's completely unaccountable from, as you mentioned, when we had a statewide freeze here in Texas, where Texans were under boil water advisories because they couldn't trust the water in their sinks to drink. with it. They were literally trying to take pieces of wood and burn it for warmth, where people were dying from carbon monoxide poisoning from their generators, and they were going to sleep and not waking up from that. That happened to folks in my district. At that time, when we needed FEMA, our state agencies, and we're always on the phone with our county folks trying to find warming centers, which is just big buildings that had the heat on. That's when Ted Cruz decided to go on vacation to Cancun, and they only came back because he was caught. Someone took a picture of him and put it on Twitter. That's why he came back. And when he did, he blamed his daughter. As a football player, I'm sitting there thinking, "No, no, you're accountable for this. This was your decision. Right?" And of course, I think I'm sure we'll talk about it, but he also had a role on January 6 that we need to talk about, and for which I think that he has to be held accountable. That's what this election is going to be about.
Do you do you consider yourself to be an optimist?
I do. Yeah. An incurable optimist.
Genetically speaking?
I think so. Yeah. I come by it naturally.
Do you recall the moment, the play, that ended your career, and when you heard that this meant you were not playing football anymore?
Yeah, so for me, it was a big deal because I'm a Dallas kid. I'm born and raised in Dallas, and I was playing the Cowboys in Dallas for the Titans. My mom and my aunt and uncle were in the stands. I got hit the wrong way. A power running play by Marion Barber, who was the Cowboys running back at a time. It wasn't a big hit; it's just that I had been dealing with neck issues. If I got hit in a certain way, then I was getting these really severe, what we call "stingersb" but this one was the worst one. My right arm was useless. I was lying on the turf. Martellus Bennett could tell there was something wrong. And he asked me if I was okay. I told him. "I don't think I am." But I was honestly lying there on the turf, there in Cowboys city and thinking, "You know, I'm so ready to go to law school. I've reached the end of this stage." I could have had an offer to keep playing after my neck surgery from the Vikings to come and basically do a one-year deal to see if I could make the team. I decided that it was time to hang it up, and go to law school. And I knew that from the time I was lying there on the turf, and it was my last play, and that was it.
Were you sad about it?
Yes, and no. I felt like I had accomplished what I wanted to accomplish, which I wanted to prove that I could play in the NFL because I had been an undrafted free agent. And if anybody knows anything about the NFL, you know that there's seven rounds of the draft. That means 32 teams to look at me seven times and said, "No." At least some of them had more than seven picks in that draft. And you come into the training camp, and there's 10, 12, 13 linebackers ahead of you in the queue. And you're gonna keep six. It's an incredibly cutthroat league in terms of the business decisions that are made when it comes to cut time. The way you make it is by showing value, if you're not somebody who has value, because they put so much money into you, which is one thing, and you have to show value by doing things that no one else can do or doing more than anyone else can do. And so the way I made it was that I played all the special teams, I was special teams ace was one of our best special teams players, but I also learned every linebacker position, could be a sub for every linebacker position. I came in on every package that required an extra linebacker. If anybody got hurt, I came in for them. So we had a four three defense with three linebackers. I played all three. And I was the number four basically in that three-person rotation. If anybody needed a breather I came in. That made me valuable. I was like a Swiss army knife. I can do a lot of things. I learned the whole defense I could be a coach on the sideline. In fact, I helped call plays sometimes. So that was that was what I learned. I'd proven that. But then I knew I was gonna miss the locker room, and I still miss the locker room. I still miss the interaction with the guys. The thing that everybody always asked me was, "What do you miss about the NFL?" I think they're probably thinking, I'm gonna say the big cheers of the crowd or whatever. But no, it's the comedy that is in a locker room and the brotherhood, the making fun of each other for stupid things like relieving tension, by goofing off, you know. Man, I miss those days.
So you go to law school, you graduate law school, and you do some government service, and not to hit the fast forward track too much, but you wind up in the United States Congress elected. And there's an apocryphal story, I suspect, about a new member of Congress who gets to take the oath, looks around in complete awe, wondering "how is it that I got here?" And after a couple of months, secure in their presence, they look around and think, "How did all these other people? And so what is your version of that story of a new congressman, sitting there taking it all in? The proverbial, I suspect, "Houston, we have a problem here in the institution?"
Yeah. Well, it's such a good question. I think it's funny that you say that, because actually, when I came in, I thought the quality, the level of quality I thought was was pretty high in the Congress, and I actually think that in my time, it's gone down. You know, we came in when Liz Cheney was the conference chair of the Republican caucus. I respected her. I had friends on the Republican side who I knew were conservative, but you could work with and I kind of knew where they were coming from. As you go around, particularly in our class, class of 2018, on the Democratic side, we had a tremendous number of people who came in who had come from a service background of some kind, whether it's military service, or serving the intelligence agencies, or serving in previous administrations like I had. I think we all came in because we thought that the country was at risk, from an out of control president and an administration that had to have at least one check in place. And at the time, we had a Republican Senate with Mitch McConnell in leadership. We had, of course, President Trump, and so we had to have at least one of the levers of power that was able to check what they were, what he was doing. I was sworn in during the longest shutdown in our history. We had a pandemic with two impeachments. It was a very chaotic first few years. I'm very concerned about the incentive structure that I've seen in the Congress, which is if you're the Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the world, the Ted Cruz's of the world, you can make a lot of money in terms of fundraising and get a lot of attention by doing things that are the worst for the country, that are just destroying the country, that are pitting people against each other, that are not based, in fact, either. I know that is an issue that you've talked a lot about. When you get that kind of positive reinforcement, as you know, in this business, which is different from football, where there's an accountability element, then you get you see that it's helping you and then you get more of it, and it starts to build and it becomes something that other people see you succeeding with that, and then they want to be like that, because they don't want to be left off the gravy train. And so you get this kind of really negative, positive reinforcement from it. And that's where I think we are right now. We're doing the right thing, and I think of the 11 Republicans who joined us and the second impeachment vote in the House for after January 6. I think they're all gone with a few exceptions. They were primaried, or they decided not to run for reelection because they, like in the case of my friend, Anthony Gonzalez, who I've played with in the NFL -- his family was receiving threats that he felt like it was unsafe for him in some ways to remain in the United States Congress. Then in this cycle, where then they're replaced by worse members and worse members, and it gets worse and worse and worse. And that's what I've been seeing. And I think Ted Cruz, in many ways, was part of the vanguard of doing that to the United States Senate. He has made the Senate a much worse place. And that's part of why we need to replace him.
Ron DeSantis, this weekend, on August 6, 2023, he finally said it. And he said it matter of fact: Trump lost the election. That could have saved a lot of pain and a lot of trouble if he had come to that conclusion at like 11:15 pm on election night?
Well, I think I've heard this before. I think it's true. I recognize that it takes individual bravery at this point to come forward in the Republican Party and say, the facts -- which is that Donald Trump lost the last election, and that it was a fair and free election. And it was, in some cases, lost narrowly, but he did lose. And the Joe Biden is the legitimate president the United States and that we should move on from there. But I do think that if there had been a critical mass around it, or if a few leaders had stepped forward and been more vocal than that we wouldn't be in this situation. And so I'm glad to see someone saying it now, honestly, because I think as I think you do as well, Steve, I think about the long scope of American history, and I think about where we're going and I think about where we've been and I I'm concerned, I'm extremely concerned about where we're going. And so we have to have this kind of bipartisan rejection. The first time in our history, we didn't have a peaceful transfer of power. And in the days after January 6, Kevin McCarthy gave a solid speech in many ways where he said that the president bore the responsibility for the attack on the Capitol. Mitch McConnell, I think, also was saying and speaking from the same hymn book, maybe even being more forceful. And I thought that in those short few days afterwards, but then we saw the shift. And if this was something that were happening in another country, we would say, "You know that their democracy is in serious peril." And, and so, I'm glad to hear Ron DeSantis say it now. I wish that more Republican leaders had said it from the very beginning, like you said.
I have, like I think most people in politics, boxes where I've accumulated all sorts of knickknacks and photographs and everything else over the years, and I was going through one of those boxes. In it, I found an old Blackberry. I picked it as this is the BlackBerry that I used, which I handed John McCain, that he used to place his concession phone call to Barack Obama. And it was on this phone that he became the first person really who mattered, who addressed Senator Obama, by what we now know him as -- as President Obama. He addressed him and congratulated him as Mr. President Elect. And when you look at the conspiracy of lies that has stripped faith and belief in the outcome of what was the freest and most fair election in American history, as a matter of fact, there is nobody with the exception of Donald Trump, who did more, to undermine that reality, that truth, than Ted Cruz. That's right. And so there are two parts to the American crisis that we face in my estimation. The first is the crisis of lying, and liars, and the inability, as a result, to be able to differentiate between what's real and what's false. And the second issue is a crisis of cowardice. And that is emblematic of what you described in Kevin McCarthy, who we know, through his own words and his own responses, judging incorrectly, that his party would have no tolerance for an insurrection, when in fact, it turned out that it did, but he knew it was wrong when he was watching and in the end, he cow-towed to the worst impulses out of of expediency, and he's certainly not alone. But a top the pyramid, when it comes to dishonesty, pre-meditated absolute dishonesty, lying at a pathological level, and then the cowardice defined as accommodating and accepting everything that you wants to now just as wrong and as manifest for your reasons to running for the US Senate in the first place. Ted Cruz is on top of that pyramid as well. And so what I wanted to ask you is to talk about his dishonesty, and to talk about the cowardice, because they're real. They're elemental in the race. And I say this, as someone who grew up in New Jersey, who lives in Utah, to you as a Texan. You're not pulling your weight, sending Ted Cruz to the United States Senate -- it's the same in Utah by sending Mike Lee to the Senate, although the state somewhat redeems itself by sending Mitt Romney to the United States Senate. But at the end of the day, all of these people aren't just showing up in Washington. They're being sent there. And what's really remarkable from someone who's not a Texan, but appreciates Texas' history. How does Texas accommodate the dishonesty and the cowardice we're seeing? If you understand Texas history, it is antithetical to the values of the state.
I think that's exactly right. I think you go back to Ted Cruz's speech at the 2016 Republican convention where he told people to vote their conscience. You then fast forward to four years later, where he is the senator who objected to the results in Arizona. Really quickly, I just want to talk about January 6 because I was there. And I was about 50 feet away from Senator Cruz when he objected. I was a member of the House leadership team. And we had a limited number of members on the floor because of COVID. And so I was on the floor. And I remember, when we were going through the states, Alabama, Alaska, we get to Arizona, as you know, it takes him over the house and over the Senate to object to the counting of the Electoral College votes of a particular state. There's always a kind of crackpot number that objects and happens almost every session, as we know. But there's usually not a senator. Paul goes, who objects in the house and who's the senator, of course, he stands up. It's my junior senator, Ted Cruz. What does Ted know at all about what happened in the election in Arizona. He knows nothing about it. Just a few minutes later, we go our separate ways. The House remains in the House. The Senate goes back to the Senate -- separate sessions to debate the results in Arizona. And I started getting texts from my staff and from my wife asking me where I am. I'm kind of annoyed because I'm on the House floor. I'm working, you know where I am, I'm in the safest place in the country outside of the White House. And they were seeing a very different story playing out on TV. They were seeing this mob that was starting to breach the Capitol. And I remember they interrupted our results. They swept the leadership teams out off the floor. We put Jim McGovern in the chair, we're trying to continue the proceedings, and at some point the Sergeant at Arms representative and Sergeant arms gets on the microphone and tells us that the Capitol has been breached. That tear gas has been deployed in the rotunda, which was just unimaginable to me. This temple of American democracy, if anybody's ever been to the Capitol, look up in the rotunda and tell me you don't feel something. And to reach under our seats for these gas masks that are underneath there that I didn't even know were there. And I sent my wife texts. She was seven months pregnant with our son Jordan, who wasn't yet two years old, and she was seven months pregnant with our next son Cameron. And I sent her a text, I didn't really think I'd ever have to send something like this in this job. I said to her, whatever happens, I love you. And your being the only former NFL linebacker on the floor, I take off my suit coat, and I'm literally preparing to have to defend a door because we've barricaded the doors with furniture, and the few Capitol police who are part of the protective detail the floor who are there in suits have their guns drawn, and there's no way out at this point. And also, my colleagues joined me and took off their suit jackets, some of the particularly younger men. And at that point, I thought that might be where we'd have to make a stand. Luckily, the Capitol police due to their bravery, and I mean their incredible bravery got us off the floor. But while that was happening, Ted Cruz, who had whipped up that mob, and who had gone around the country talking about how this was a steal, and who was, as we learned later, part of the legal backing for trying to challenge this, and who was implementing the legal strategy, which was to try and delay, delay, delay. He was hiding in the supply closet. And I think it does say something about who he is. And I don't think it matches who we are as Texans. I know our history well, and we're a state that's proud of our history as one that fought for its own independence, that was its own nation, the Lone Star State, but also that has had a long line of leaders, whether you agree with him or not, who were independent, strong voices, who didn't just follow but who led from George W. Bush, LBJ, to Sam Rayburn to Barbara Jordan, along line George HW Bush. Americans who, whether you agree with them politically or not, you have to say that they they were independent leaders who step forward, and were important for us for the country. Cruz , he knows the difference. Also, Steve, I think we both know that. You know that Donald Trump lost that election. He's a Harvard-trained lawyer. He's somebody who knew what he was doing to the country. But he had decided that it was in his political interest to do this and that has to be punished at the ballot box. We're seeing Donald Trump getting some element of accountability, through his indictments and arraignment. We'll see where the trial goes, a jury of his peers will decide. But for Ted Cruz, that accountability is going to come in this election. In a state that he only won by two points last time, and that we can beat him in this time, because it's not who we are as Texans.
When you think about Ted Cruz, hiding in the closet, you just said something, and I want to bring you to that moment. You said it very calmly. A lot of Texas in you the way you said, it's a lot of cowboy. You were preparing to make your stand. Tell me about that. What does that mean?
Well, as I said, I, when I sent that text to my wife, it's the kind of text I think you -- and we've learned later that Mike Pence is Secret Service detail was also contacting their families and telling them, "we don't think we're going to make it out of here," and saying their goodbyes. I was in a very different situation. Because I had a number of my colleagues who are older and who were looking to me in many ways, I think, to defend them. And my thought was, "maybe we can hold this off long enough so that the other folks can get off the floor." That was my thought in the moment, obviously, and thankfully, it didn't come to that. But all the doors had been locked., so the alarms are going off. People are putting on these hoods, I call them gas masks, these hoods, to protect against tear gas.
It looks like there's no way out. And no, I didn't put it on. I was holding,
because you're getting ready to fight?
Yeah, I was holding it. I didn't know. I didn't smell anything. It didn't feel like it was necessary. Ruben Gallego, who is a Marine is standing on top of some of the chairs telling people when you put on your mask, breathe slowly, so that you don't hyperventilate. And at that moment, it just seems very much like this is what's going to be necessary. And I don't mean that and in any way to make myself seem any braver...
Of course not, but I think this is important...are there any Republicans standing at that door, at that ramp or with you in common defense of their colleagues?
Yeah, there are and I give them a lot of credit for it. We all, I think, felt very similarly about the situation. Now, we had some Republicans who were standing right there. And I think, you know, in 2006, comes to mind, I'm forgetting some of the other names. But, you know, I think there were some folks who were willing to do the right thing and to be able to help these very few Capitol Police in any way they could. And one of the things, I think, that was shocking to people probably to learn was how few Capitol Police were having to do against so many, and protect that line. Brian Sicknick's family was present on the anniversary of January 6,, the officer who died on January 6, and his family was there when we were speaking about it in the Capitol. I spoke directly to his family. And I meant it, I said, "you know, your son's sacrifice allowed me to meet mine. I was able to get off that floor because they held those lines, and described it as medieval combat. And when we left, I remember looking back and seeing the officers staying behind with their guns drawn, and the glass breaking. And I remember thinking, "what about these guys?" What about them? And I remember thinking about the incredible sacrifice they were making for us because, at that time, we didn't know that the riot was going to subside in some way it you have to put yourself in the place where we were so close to an event of mass violence, that Americans have no idea of it for the most part. I think that's one of the great services of the January 6 committee did was illustrating for people just how close senators, member of Congress, but also our our brave police officers came to something that was more akin to a Civil War era battle than to anything we're used to.
No doubt, no doubt in my mind whatsoever that officer Eugene Goodman saved Mitt Romney's life. You know, he turned that crowd around and Romney was around the corner and that would have killed him. When you look at, and I'm not trying to put you on the spot, to criticize Beto, Beto O'Rourke, but he didn't get the job done against Ted Cruz in a difficult state. It's a Republican state, which means you're gonna have to get a lot of Republican votes for you. So what are you going to say to those people, many millions of whom have been brainwashed, frankly, to some degree. You know, look, I have relatives in my family that I tried to convince, you know, Seattle didn't burn down under the Black Lives Matter riots of two years ago. Portland is still there. It doesn't look like Hiroshima in 1945. What are you going to say to those Republicans who you need, that you're a different type of Democrat for the state of Texas? What's your proposition?
Well, you know, first of all, of course, we're gonna build on what Beto did. And I think his run is incredibly important. I want to give him credit for doing something at a time when no one else would. And it took a lot of bravery and a lot of effort. And that's why we're having this conversation anyways, is because of the the race that he ran. But I do have experience running in these areas where the only way you're going to win is by appealing to folks who might not agree with you on everything. You know, I did beat the 22-year incumbent, as I said, who was entrenched in a district that was considered an "R plus five" district, so leaned five points more Republican than the rest of the country. And we did that also, by getting a lot of folks who, a decade earlier, were driving around our area with W stickers on the back of their car, you know, voting for me, and block walking for me and contributing to our campaign. And as Pete Sessions...
Pete sessions was a good politician...
Yeah, I mean, he had been the chair of the NRCC. Twice. And, you know, he was the chairman of the Rules Committee, which, as you know, is kind of the leadership's position for somebody who is important to them, the vice president, the Speaker of the House, all came to the district. Les Parnas, Igor Fruman and Rudy Giuliani came down and spent a bunch of Russian money trying to beat me, funneled the Trump super PAC, which got them indicted by the Southern District of New York, but we didn't know that during the campaign. We did it by appealing to, as I said earlier, these kind of universal values that I think are sitting there underneath the surface, and waiting for someone to come along and say, "Listen, we're not as different as the cable news is telling you. I know that we can have arguments about the size and scope of government, but there are certain things that shouldn't be up for debate." And that also, we're a community, and in this community, there are certain values that we have that are unique to other places that are not, we're different from other places. And I was born and raised in my district, and I knew what those values were in my mom and taught in public schools. And in that district, I'd gotten a public school in that district, the hospital that I was born in, is the one that I represented. And also by understanding who we are and what our economy is based on, I'm somebody who has the rare distinction of being endorsed by the US Chamber of Commerce in my last two elections against Republicans, against Republican business people. Because I've been a pro-business Democrat who understands what our economy needs. Part of the reason why the USMCA passed, the US Mexico Canada trade agreement, is because me and Henry Cuellar and a few other Texas Democrats really pushed for that, because we're a trade state, and we understand how important trade is to Texas, but also, at the same time, been endorsed by the AFL CIO. I'm a former union member myself, as member of the NFL Players Association, and I appreciate the right to organize and so it is possible to appeal broadly and to try to find this common ground and and it's not going to work for everybody. And I recognize that there are folks who, in my congressional races, I thought I did a pretty good job in Congress, but in my reelection, they were gonna vote for me, and that's, that's okay. I respect their vote. But what we are trying to do is make sure folks know that whether you vote for me or not, I'm going to be your representative. And that's a big difference from Ted Cruz, who if you don't, if you're not part of his group, you're not part of the small slice of Texans who came out in that election and got him over the line to win that election, then he doesn't. He's not interested in what you think. He's not going to be your senator as well. He's going to be podcasting three times a week. demagoguing about you, going on Fox News talking about you, he's going to be pointing out problems, for example, at the border, but never trying to be a part of the solution unlike John Cornyn, not going to, after you've already tried to pass the Safer Communities Act, which got John Cornyn into a lot of trouble with the Republican Party, it was the right thing to do. It was the first time in 30 years, we've done anything to prevent gun violence in this country. He's not like John Cornyn, who voted for the Chips and Science Act, which is bringing high tech manufacturing back to our state. He's not like John Cornyn, who voted not to default on the country. Cruz wants people to default. He's somebody who is just looking out for himself and who I think gives us a chance to talk to that middle and say, "Listen, I understand you may not agree with Democrats and everything. I recognize that I'm going to meet you here in the middle and say, we're going to agree on the fundamental things. And I'm somebody who, if you give me the faith to vote for me, I'll be your senator and I'll be somebody who listens to you. I'll care about what's best for you, not what's best for me."
When you talk to an audience of Texans, what do you say to them about what makes you anxious about the Democratic Party today? I was always a moderate Republican, and as the party started to go off the rails, I was an early voice, going back a long time now, saying, "Wow, times are changing, and not in a good way anything." Anything you worry about with the direction of the Democratic Party? Do you get why so many working class people are estranged from the Democratic Party in the country? And what do you say to national Democrats about what's going on the border? They don't know in Washington about what's going on in the border. What do you share with them?
Well, I agree with you in terms of kind of seeing, being able to look at your own party and saying, "Listen, I'm a member of this party, but we've got some issues we need to talk about." And for us, it's I think it's a sense of elitism. It's this idea that you have a highly educated class who thinks it knows what's best for everyone. And I'm somebody who made my living until I went to law school, with my hands, with the sweat off my brow, and literally, with the plan that I would shed on a football field. I know what it's like to shower after work, instead of before work, which is something Ted Cruz has no idea about. The work he's done has never been dependent on sweating it out in the 100 degree heat in Texas, and testing yourself against someone else the way that we did in football, and you don't have to do that, to have an understanding. But it's certainly something that gave me that. And I think, in our party, we are in real danger of losing folks who do make their living from the sweat off their brow, and who work hard every day, and who don't think anybody has given them any advantages, and who look around and see people saying that, "Oh, well, you know, you've benefited from this, that and the other," and they say, "I don't feel that way about myself. You know, my father worked hard. My mom worked hard. I'm working as hard as I possibly can. I feel like I'm barely getting ahead. Who are you talking about?" And that kind of lack of empathy and understanding of the working man and woman. And also just understanding that there are things that we have done wrong in our history, but we have a broader story to tell about where we're going. That is a great story. But let's not spend all of our time re litigating the past, and this is on both parties, and I hate the "both sides" of them, but in some cases, you'll see us saying, "Well, you know, let's go back and find every single person with a building is named after and let's change that." Or on the Republican side, of course, we're seeing them saying, let's teach that slavery was good for the slaves. But there's a real story to tell, which is that we have a lot of flaws, but that the genius of our Constitution and of our country is that it is capable of changing, and that it has and that we perfected our union over time. That's a better story to tell. It's an exciting story to tell. Now when it comes to the border, I think my grandfather was a customs officer in Brownsville after World War Two. He fought in the Navy in the Pacific. And he came back. And he never went to college. And he got a good job working for the customs department, and in Brownsville at the very tip of Texas, which is right on the border, and my mom and my aunt grew up in Brownsville, and I spent most of my childhood, driving with my mom from Dallas, down to Brownsville, to visit my grandmother there. My grandfather passed before I was born, and so I understand what the our border communities are. I think that what people don't grasp nationally, is the burden that falls on these border communities, from our inability to deal with immigration and immigration reform. And it's not just the border itself, but it's the fact that you have Catholic charities that are focused in the valley, in Texas, that and along the border, and all of their resources are over extended. You have local communities who have set up their own charity, agencies and institutions to try and help migrants, and they're maxed out. And then people sleeping under bridges, people being released and sleeping on street corners. It's frustrating for people who live in that community because, number one, they're not responsible for it. And there's not much that they can do, but they're already putting in so much of their own resources and energy trying to do the right thing to treat people in a humane way. But that's why we need to have a senator from Texas, who actually talked about, "Okay, well, let's do something about this." For the first time since the Reagan era, let's have a comprehensive agreement, where we say, "Yeah, we're gonna have a whole lot of money for border security, we're gonna make this as secure as we possibly can." But let's also reshape our immigration system, so that we can process people more quickly, and process asylum claims better. They have more immigration judges in place so that border patrol agents aren't spending all their time doing paperwork instead of what they're supposed to be doing. And let's better support these border communities because there are geopolitical forces that are forcing millions of Venezuelans to leave Venezuela and leave Haiti, and people from El Salvador and Guatemala and Honduras. And that's going to continue, particularly, as climate change and other impacts continue. So we have to deal with this now, it's not going to get better. And that's what I also get frustrated with saying, "Oh, let's just build a wall and act like that'll do something." I mean, get out of here. It's much more than that. So I think on the Democratic side, this idea that we just need to welcome everyone, that's not going to be possible. What we have to be able to do is have an immigration system that meets the needs of our economy, and that treats people consistent with our values, but that also does secure our border. That does in a way make our border communities feel safe, but also not so much of the burden fall on them.
I have two things I want to wrap up with you on. First is we're going to have people from all over the country who will see or listen to this conversation who are not Texans. What does it mean to you to be a Texan?
Yeah, well, I think we're mixed. I'm a fourth generation Texan. My boys are fifth generation Texans. We're a mix. We're not just Southern, we're not just Western, we're Southwestern. We're a place where so many things come together. We're an incredibly diverse state that is disproportionately young, in terms of our population. We are dynamic. We're growing so rapidly, we have 1,000 people a day moving to Dallas-Fort Worth alone. And things are so much bigger in Texas. We're talking about 30 million Texans. We're talking about driving from Dallas to El Paso, it's about half of the country, and you're still in the same state. We're a state that has produced, I think, some of the most authentic aspects of American culture that come from multiple different backgrounds, whether that's our incredibly vibrant Latino community and culture, or the African- American community that has produced some of the national leaders that have helped shape our country, to the independent Texan, who's seen as the person who will be the straight talking Texan in any scenario. And so it's a state of a lot of inconsistencies. Of course, like any place, but in my experience, and I really mean this, I would not have been able to do what I've done, were it not for the people that I grew up around. They looked out for me, and they took me into their homes, and in some cases, they extended an open hand to me at a time when looking like I do in the 80s and 90s, in Texas, that could have gone a different way. And so, I think we're a state that also believes in doing big things. And that's one of the things that I find frustrating about where we are politically, because we, we have such small-minded leaders, I think in place right now.
What does it mean to you to be an American?
Well, I think that's a great question. I was a voting rights lawyer before I came to Congress. I revere our democracy. I think it's the root of all of our strengths, whether that's our economic strength, or military strength, it's all based on us being a free people who have chosen their own way. I think America is a miracle, I really do. You look a -- I was a history major at Baylor -- the scope of the world. You see the Senate and Rome that couldn't make it, a democracy in Athens that couldn't make it. And then you have a long gap of monarchies and dictators. And for the first time in human history, since the Roman Senate, you have a democracy emerge in this new world, that becomes the world's leading power that has spread this incredible kind of ideology and thought around the world to the point where now, while we're concerned about democracy, I think falling back in certain places, it's become sort of the baseline that people think this is what should be expected. And to me, being an American means that you can do anything. There's no limit on what we can do. That's one of the things that I love when Joe Biden says it like, "Come on, remember who we are, as the United States of America, there's nothing that we've ever put our mind to, that we can't do." I'veI just been reading a book about the space race and the Apollo program. This sort of the ingenuity and the talent that we brought together to do something that we still aren't doing right now. We're still going to the moon right now. Here we are, 60 years later, and anything is possible for us. But it's also true that we can't be defeated externally, we can only be defeated internally. The Chinese aren't an existential threat to us. The Russians are not an existential threat to us. The Iranians, the North Koreans. I'm on the Foreign Affairs Committee. These are folks we are competing with them in a very real way, but they're not an existential threat to the existence of the United States. So one thing that is our own internal issues of how we're going to manage our way forward. It's a pluralistic democracy, where folks from a lot of different backgrounds, and from all different parts of the world had to come together and agree on electing people and accepting the results of those elections. And it's never happened. You go to Europe and their democracies, they're not as diverse as our democracy. They don't have as many voices, and they have all these crazy parties as well. We are trying to do something that's very difficult, and leadership matters in this period. It does. And we're here because we had a demagogue, an elected president who used his role to try and attack the foundations of our democracy, and leaders are going to lead us out of this. We need Republican leaders, as well as Democrats. And that's why, you mentioned Mitt Romney, I have so much respect for Senator Romney, for what he has tried to do. I have so much respect for the folks who I've seen, like Liz Cheney, who's a friend of mine, and who I text with quite often, who have said what they know is right, and taking a stand at a time when it's difficult for them. It's impossible for them politically, but historically, it can be looked on quite well. So to me, being an American means there's nothing we can't do. That also means that we are responsible for it. No one else is going to do it for us. There's no cavalry coming. It's up to us.
How do people find your campaign website?
They can go to colinallred.com. I'll spell it for folks because it's one "L" in Colin and two "Ls" in Allred. And I'll just say we need your help. The way this works, as you know, Steve, is at the federal level. We have limits on what we can take from folks, and I'm somebody who doesn't take diamond corporate money, so I rely on ordinary folks giving what they can to support my campaign. If you appreciate anything that I've said today, or you think that as a country we can do better or as a Texans we can do better than Ted Cruz, then go to colinallred.com and get involved with us.
Let me just wrap up by saying that this experiment, which will soon reach its 250th anniversary in 2026, has never had a gentle or calm period ever across our history. We're clearly in another period of testing democracy. Government of the people, by the people for, the people cannot endure under the weight of demagogues, and liars, like Ted Cruz. It's as simple as that. And so I think everybody who's had an opportunity to listen or watch this, if you have an opportunity to vote in the state of Texas understands what an improvement you would be over the incumbent Ted Cruz. One of Texas's great heroes is a man named James Earl Rudder. James Earl Rudder was the commander of the second Ranger Battalion that stormed the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc above Omaha Beach on D Day. And when James Earl Rudder returned to Texas in peace, and became the president of A&M, two of the things he did there were admit women, with great controversy, to the college. He also took the first steps towards desegregating Texas A&M. So whether service is in the military, or service is through academia, the expansion of the American ideal, an idea, is what people are remembered for. It's what their legacies are built on. And at this moment of testing and crisis, you, Congressman Allred, were and are prepared to make a stand. Ted Cruz was hiding in a closet. That says it all. The country needs people who will take a stand, take a stand for the American way of life. And I really encourage everybody who's listening to do what I will do, which is donate as much as you are able to this campaign, because we're not going to get out of the mess we're in unless we elect people of outstanding character, men like Colin Allred. Thank you very much.
