Andrew Yang, Beto O'Rourke & Donna - Interview | Aug 7, 2020

Yeah, we just picked him or her up. We don't know the gender yet. And she has, I think the word is imprinting. So, Molly is now the de facto mom. And so, the duckling is following Molly around the house. What the, there's not seeing this giant zoom tally go up. See it go from eight to 800 or 8,000. I don't even know what the capacity is of these zoom meetings. Hello, everyone. Welcome to this incredible fundraiser for Donna Imham, who's running for Congress in Texas's 31st district. What an enormous state. It's got at least 31 districts. And we are being joined, not just by the candidate herself, Donna Imham, the future of Austin, Texas, and the U.S. Congress, but also my friend and former colleague out on the trail, the man who is just about single-handedly put Texas on the map as going from red to blue, Mr. Beto O'Rourke. Yeah, Beto. Let's give him a round of applause, everyone. Texas-sized round of applause for Beto. So, I guess I'll share some war stories about me and Beto on the trail, but I'll say that it was one of the pleasures of running for president that you actually got to know the other candidates as human beings. And Beto, I'm going to say this as the highest praise, I believe Beto was the most human candidate on the trail. You know, aside from like maybe I was somewhere in the ballpark, but like a lot of our fellow candidates did not come across as super warm and fuzzy and human, shall we say. No, no, just like, you know, it's like we all had sort of like these like media-oriented force fields on a lot of the time. But Beto, you're around him and like the force field's not there. You just wore his heart on his sleeve and it was just the same person, the same candidate. And I feel like we were reffing the Gen X vibe. But, you know, you were someone that I was always excited to see on the trail. I felt like a kinship with you and you're an incredible voice for progress, not just in Texas, but around the country. So, it's a privilege to be able to consider you a colleague and friend and would love to just hand the baton to you so you can talk about Texas, turning it blue, Donna's race, why you're endorsing Donna, your lovely daughter who just came in behind you, who I think might be the duck's mom. Beto O'Rourke, let's give it up. Thank you, Beto. Hey, Andrew, thank you. And you know what? That is really high praise, especially coming from you, who I consider to be, it's funny that we're using this language, but I think it's the most appropriate we have. I consider to be one of the most human candidates I have met. And I think there is, Amy, you want to say hello real quick? You're in the shot. This is my wife, Amy, who Andrew knows very well on the campaign trail. She is the duck's grandmother. For those who don't know, we adopted a duckling that was abandoned. And anyhow, Amy's checking on the duck behind me. I'm in our community. So, Amy, I was just telling Andrew, and I bet you agree that I think there is, you know, you described a sports field that surrounds many candidates that's impenetrable and is very impersonal. And, you know, it's a product of the consultants and the polling and the pressures involved in running in a high stakes race. And I think you were really successful in defying all of that and coming through as a real person. And I cannot tell you how many people, and Andrew, not just in the battleground states of the early caucuses and primaries of Iowa and Nevada, you know, South Carolina, New Hampshire, but in my hometown of El Paso, Texas, where people come up to me and are like, did you, do you know Andrew Yang? I'm really excited about that guy. And what was so impressive to me is so many of the people that you connected with and energized were young or previously apolitical. They did not see themselves or a future for themselves in the political process or in our democracy. And you brought them in. And the great news is that they're going to stay in, I'm confident, not only for November 2020, but for the foreseeable future, if we're going to make it as a country. It's probably in part that I couldn't afford any consultants for a long time, Beto. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. And true to form, Donna, it was Andrew who called me perhaps a month ago and said, Hey, Beto, I'm sure you know about this race in Texas, but there is this candidate who has caught my attention. And I just think she's really exciting and exciting, perhaps in some of the same ways that I and so many others around this country found Andrew to be so exciting. You have defied the consultancy and the conventional wisdom and the status quo of politics in this country. And certainly in our state of Texas, you have radically expanded the electorate. So I'm talking about Andrew Yang bringing in thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, maybe even more than that voters who previously perhaps would not have participated in the process. And now they are, you're doing the same thing in your district. I believe from 2018, the year that I ran to 2020, you increased the Democratic primary participation by over two hundred and thirty three percent, which, by the way, folks, is nuts. That that is the political science term for it, because 2018 was in and of itself a watershed year in Texas Democratic politics and Texas voter turnout. And Donna blew that out of the water. And it's because I believe she is engaging with voters everywhere in every precinct within the district that she seeks to represent. She does not care, as we say in El Paso, no me importa whether they are Republican or Democrat or independent or have not been politically engaged before. They are important to her. And what is most inspiring to me is that Donna seems intent upon engaging with those who perhaps have been ignored by the political process or those in positions of political power in the past. She wants to bring them in, the folks for whom the system has not worked, who are out of work and perhaps were out of work prior to this pandemic and the giant recession that followed. Folks who cannot get health care in a state that has more uninsured than any other in the country. And one of the things that Donna and I share is a deep resolve to helping those people, because we've also met their families. Family members who Donna, I'm sure, have told you they have an uncle or a dad or a mom who gets arrested on purpose to be able to go to the county jail to get treated for their schizophrenia or their bipolar disorder, because our county jails have become the largest providers of mental health care service in the state of Texas. And if that is not immoral, that doesn't define what is immoral, I don't know what does. And you want to help them, especially those who've been most harmed by this current system. You're an entrepreneur, you're an engineer, you're a job creator. You know what it means to get people back to work and to ensure that they have high value, high wage, high skilled jobs, because you've created high value, high wage, high skilled jobs over the course of your career. Those are some of the reasons that I am so excited to endorse you and be on this call with you, because you stand for the very best of us, not in the Democratic Party, but in this country of America, in this state of Texas. And one more thing, Andrew, one more reason that I'm so excited about Donna, not only is her level of engagement and her expansion of the electorate going to help her win against an incumbent Republican and send yet another Democrat from the state of Texas to the United States Congress, but she is going to help our candidates up and down the ballot. People are excited about Donna, and when they're excited about Donna and they go out to vote, they don't just vote for Donna, they vote for John Busey, who's one of these amazing candidates who won a long shot race in 2018, who's a state rep. They're going to vote for James Tallarico, another one of our incumbent Democrats who won a surprise victory in the last midterm and needs to win again. And we have Kiki Williams, a black woman running for the state house, who is a lifelong career Army officer and is in the Fort Hood area, which Donna seeks to represent. I want people to come out to vote for Donna and to stay on that ballot for Kiki. Donna's going to do that. And then I promise the last thing, and Andrew, you and I talked a little bit about this on the phone, but here's my pitch for all of you who are not from Texas, who are on this call. And I saw in response to Andrew's tweet and my tweet, a lot of you are coming from all parts of the country. Here's why this race is important to you, even if you don't live in Donna's district and even if you don't live in Texas. Part of the reason that Andrew and I ran for president is we understood how decisive and defining this presidential election will be for our country. Do we want kids in cages? Do we want a criminal justice system that has put more people away than any other country? And disproportionately, they are people of color. Do we want people dying of diabetes and curable cancer and the flu and COVID-19, all preventable deaths in this country for lack of insurance? Do we want to be the country that takes the lead on confronting climate change before it's too late? All of that is going to be decided in this presidential election. And it's also going to be a referendum on Donald Trump. Texas, with 38 electoral college votes, is the largest swing state and the largest battleground state in the union. If Texas, for the first time since 1976, when I was four years old and Andrew, you were around the same age, if Texas, for the first time in 44 years, sends our 38 electoral college votes to the Democratic nominee, not only do we prevent Donald Trump from any attempt to sow chaos and confusion in an effort to steal the rightfully won election from Joe Biden, but it also seismically changes the psychology in this country of what is possible, what we're going to be able to do. And you know what? If people excited for Donna come out to vote for her, they're also going to be out to vote for Joe Biden. So up and down the ballot, Donna helps us in Texas, in her district, but she also helps us in this country to close the book on Donald Trump, turn the page and start a new chapter for a much better America. So Donna, that's why I'm so excited to be on this call with you. That's why we wanted all of our supporters to become your supporters. That's why I'm very proud to endorse you. So thank you for letting me be with you today. Thank you so much. I mean, so much pressure. You're going to turn the whole page for the whole country. So Beto, we have a pretty good summary of who you are, but like, I'm thrilled about you for many of the same reasons. You're an engineer, you're a problem solver. You're someone who got motivated by the fact that you see that the jobs of tomorrow are not going to just magically appear for so many folks in your district and around the country. And you actually did something about it. Like reminded me of some of the things that I've done over the last number of years. And it's that kind of vision and focus on the future and problem solving orientation that we need in Congress. So now let's give it up for the next member of the U.S. Congress in the Texas 31st District, Donna Iram. Yeah, Donna. Thank you so much. I don't know what I did to deserve this amazing event today. First of all, Beto, thank you so much for endorsing with so much passion and why you're doing this. Because what I tell people is endorsements are not just names, right? People who have endorsed our campaign, they have gotten behind our campaign. They've put their time into it. They have text message for us. They've made calls for us. So all the endorsements that you see on our website, these are not just people putting their name out there. They want to see change. And I know that, you know, you and I don't know each other all that well, but the way you endorse our campaign, this is going to mean so much to all the volunteers that have worked relentlessly on this campaign. You know, I have friends who work during the day and they come home from work and they literally tell their spouse and their family, I'm busy working on Donna's campaign. Don't, don't disturb me. You know, these are the people that really, really needed to hear this from you, because that's how we're going to flip this district. And Andrew, you know, it goes without saying you came on to our race and you just put the wind behind our backs and let us take this race, you know, 13 point wind, bringing up 23,000 more voters. And you talk about two, you know, 233% being crazy in the runoff. We got, our campaign got almost the exact same number of votes that we got in the primary. Now that's, that's crazy. Okay. Usually in a runoff, you get some subset of it, right? So thank you so much. This is such an amazing opportunity. And the interesting thing is the reason that we're even talking about Texas flipping is better. Before 2018, no one would have never even talked about Texas flipping. Beto is the guy. And when we say Texas that, you know, you could not live in Texas and not hear about Beto. There was Beto mania here. Okay. And it's real. It didn't matter which County you went to, which precinct you went to. Okay. There were Beto signs everywhere. And I'll tell you this, when I was canvassing myself, walking in Bell County, Killeen, Parker Heights, and Temple, this is prior to the pandemic. We would look on van and you know, we would knock on doors of Democrats, but then I would see a Beto sign and it wouldn't be in van. I would see, believe it or not, Andrew, you won't believe this, but even in Bell County, I would see Yang signs and I would go knock those doors. Cause I was like, that person is going to support me. That's a good signal. If you had a Beto or Yang sign, that's a good prospect. And you know, when we saw the Beto stickers on cars, well, we would leave one of our pieces of content on the car. Cause I was like, that person's going to support, support me, support our campaign. So when, when we talk about Texas flipping, the only reason we're doing this is because of Beto today. And let me go a little bit into details into my district, because this is interesting stuff. If you're watching from outside Texas, you've probably heard that Texas, Texas is super gerrymandered. So they took Austin, they sliced it into six pieces. They appended it with large swaths of rural areas to dilute the vote. So Texas is 31st district is Northwest, the Northwest suburbs of Austin and all of the big suburbs. So Round Rock, Cedar Park, Leander, and then you go North, you hit Georgetown. And then when you go past Georgetown, you hit Bell County. So you've got Killeen and then you got Parker Heights, Belton and Temple. And Killeen is home to the, the largest armored vehicle military base in the entire country. So we have more veterans per square mile in this district and than anywhere else in Texas. So that's what this district is all about. Now, in 2018, Beto, for the first time, flipped Williamson County blue. That is history in the making. And we have to just close this 2.9%, just 8,000 votes in Bell County. And that's it. That's at the congressional level. But if you look at what Beto did, he was within 3000 votes of flipping this entire district blue. That could have not been imagined. You know, we had cotton fields out here in Williamson County. There were lynchings in Williamson County. That's the history of Williamson County. And Beto O'Rourke flipped Williamson County blue. So when we talk about Beto mania, it's real. That's what we're talking about flipping Texas. And if you don't think it's possible, think again, because we're going to do it and we're going to get it done. And people are going to be like, how'd you do it? And we're going to tell you how we did it. And this is how we're going to do it. So get behind our race. We need you. Yeah, that's incredible, Donna. And so well said. If you're watching this and thinking you want to help, go to votefordonna.com, make a donation. If you've already donated, great. You can go there to volunteer. But every text banker, phone bank, or volunteer online counts. We can connect you to the people in the Texas 31st District. You can just be phoning and texting them like that. And if you haven't made a donation, you're watching this. I'm not even sure how someone can be watching this without a donation. I thought you had to donate to be in this Zoom call. But I'm told that it's possible that someone is somehow watching this and hasn't donated. So if you haven't donated, donate whatever you can. $5, $10, $20 to Donna. Every bit counts. And I'm supposed to be the math guy. And Beto and Donna can talk in great detail. But this is an eminently winnable race. That's one of the really fun things about it. And one really fun part is when I talked to Beto about this race, Beto is a U.S. congressman. So he actually remembers Donna's opponent. Because Donna's opponent has been in Congress for quite some time. And his name is John Carter III. He's 78 years young. And I believe that he's been in Congress for perhaps like the better part of 20 years, 17 years, 20 years, something along those lines. Nine terms. Yeah. So Beto, not to be negative because we're nice people and you don't want to be a jerk or anything. But can you talk about the massive gulf between having John Carter represent this district and have Donna represent this district? You know, I think the best way that I can put it, Andrew, is the incumbent John Carter is an enabler of Donald Trump. So if you are horrified, as you should be, you're a sentient human being, that this administration has put kids in cages, that in fact, this administration has lost the lives of six children in our custody and care who are apprehended for the crime of fleeing the most brutal and violent countries on the face of the planet and traveled 2,000 miles to come to this country to seek asylum to do so. If you are appalled at the open racism of this administration and the unambiguous signals sent by this president to the gunman who a year ago drove 600 miles to El Paso, Texas and slaughtered 23 people based on the color of their skin and their perceived immigration status. If what this administration has done in the face of the deadliest pandemic since 1918 that is claiming the lives of nearly 160,000 of our fellow Americans, one quarter of the total death total on planet Earth. If any of this moves you in any way, know that the incumbent that Donna is up against has enabled every single one of those actions. And there has to be accountability, right? In this democracy, we cannot just blame Donald Trump. We can't just blame John Carter. This democracy is of, by, and for the people. So up to every single one of us to decide whether we are okay with this stuff or whether we deserve and want and will work for something better. And so the reason, Andrew, I'm so excited about Donna is not only will she ensure that there's accountability for the incumbent and stop Trump and Trumpism in Congress, but the reverse of everything that I just described, her policies when it comes to immigration, when it comes to healthcare, when it comes to treating the asylum seekers as the human beings that they are, and making sure that as you always admonished us to do, Andrew, in the campaign, to be governed by the facts, the math, the science, and the truth when it comes to COVID or when it comes to how we take care of our fellow Americans. She is in many ways, the antithesis of Trump and Trumpism and the kind of Trump enablers that we have in the incumbent. Like, if you look at Donna, she does sort of seem like the opposite of a lot of what we're seeing right now. I want to add on to what Beto's saying, because it's really important. In Taylor, Texas, which is in my district, we actually have a immigration detention center. It's a women's detention center. The folks, the people in this district have been protesting outside this detention center for many months now, wanting it to be shut down and closed, as it should be. This is so un-American for us to detain people who are trying to escape violence, as Beto mentioned. It is also important to know that my opponent has taken PAC money from the GEO Group, the GEO Group that runs private prisons on the border of this state, where a 16-year-old boy died on a cold concrete floor. That is unacceptable. That is not who we are as Americans, and we won't accept it. We will change this policy no matter what. These are the things that got me off of my couch saying, enough is enough. I'm going to do something about it. We need to come together because we can solve these problems, and we're way better than that. It is important for people to know also that people who are on DACA and who are on the front lines of COVID-19 today—nurses, doctors, schoolteachers—that throughout this pandemic have borne the brunt of the challenges. They're on the front lines. They're grocery store shelves, etc. The cost of renewing DACA has actually doubled, essentially, because the time you get renewal for has become shortened. Not only that, over the past several months and years, they have been in limbo. Is it going to be canceled? Can I renew? Am I too late? Do I do early? A lot of people don't know this, but when you apply for DACA and you have five months left, six months left, when you apply again for one year, you lose that six months. You're paying over and over and over and over again. You're being taxed and taxed and taxed just to be able to serve in your own country, just to be able to create wealth economically in your own country. That is not who we are as Americans, and we're going to change that. I know we can change that because Beto did it. MJ Hager did it when she ran, and she's running for the Senate, which a lot of people don't know. I want to talk a little bit about 2020 and why 2020 is ours to lose this district. Since 2018, we had more than 65,000 people move into this district. It's more than 65,000 people. These are mostly young families looking for a better future for their children. They're looking for good education. They're looking for good school systems. The reason that's happened is that Austin has grown. It's exploded in growth over the last five years. People are looking for inexpensive housing, a place to raise their families, and it's pushed people out into the suburbs. Most of these people realize that in order to have a good future for their children, that they're going to need to see change. Let me put it to you in very specific terms. If you are a family that makes $75,000 or more, let's say you have two children and you make $85,000 or you make $100,000. By the way, that's not a whole lot of money when you live out in the suburbs of Austin, Texas. It's expensive to live out here. When you have two children and you want to put them through college, you get zero assistance. It's like taking out two mortgages just so that your kids can have a wonderful, bright future and can make a thriving wage and can actually live a decent life. These are the challenges that we know, that I know for a fact we can solve, that we need to take down the cost of college, trade school, or even if you go get a certification of some kind, we need to drive those costs down to nothing. We can do that. Right now, the cost of college or any kind of education is thousands of percent higher than what wages have been over the last two to three decades. That in itself doesn't make any sense. There's no logic behind it. It's just there. These are the problems that people in Williamson County and Bell County are encountering, and that's why they're responding to our message. When we get this message to them, when we say, look, it doesn't matter whether you have health insurance or you don't have health insurance. If you get sick, if your little girl gets sick, you want to make sure you can take them to see a doctor. At that point, you're not thinking about anything else. You're not thinking about insurance companies. You're not thinking about anything. You want them to get better. Every single person in this district, these are the solutions they're looking for, and when we tell them we have them, we're going to be able to solve these in an economically astute way. They respond to our message, and that's how we're changing hearts and minds and getting people out to vote. Well, you can really see, and Beto had a huge role in this, where Texas and particularly the Austin area has been trending purple, shall we say, over the last number of cycles. The fact that 65,000 new people arrived in your district over the last year or two doesn't surprise me because it seems like everyone I know is heading to Austin. Austin has that rep, and a lot of the folks who are heading to Austin are from all over, so it also makes sense to me that it would actually be very dynamic politically, and it's been heading in the right direction anyway. Can you talk about the math in your district? You increased turnout. What was the gap in 2018 between John Carter and his opponent, who I think came very, very close to beating him? Is that right? Yep, absolutely. It's 2.9%, just 8,000 votes, okay? 8,000 votes? Oh my gosh. Just 8,000 votes. If you look at the primary on March 3rd, we had more than 70,000 people show up to vote in a Democratic primary compared to 28,000 in 2018. That's your 233%. If you look at the runoff alone, we're talking about a runoff in the middle of July, July 14th, in the middle of the worst pandemic when Texas cases were spiking, and they still are, unfortunately. We had 23,000 more people come out in a runoff in the middle of a pandemic to come vote. That's horsing. One of the things that Beto referred to was that when you talk about you energizing different kinds of voters, this is meant as a compliment. You don't seem like a cookie-cutter congressional candidate on several levels. You're not someone, I'm sure, who because someone came and tapped you and said, Donna, you need to run for Congress, which is something else that you and I have in common. What is it that actually got you so energized to take on this race? It's an enormous commitment. You've already defied any expectations by winning the Democratic primary and becoming the nominee to take on John Carter. What drove you to do something that's, frankly, somewhat unusual? It's definitely a crazy thing for me. What I tell people is that I have never thought of running for office. I've never had political ambition. I'm not even a political person. If you talk to my co-workers of my 18-year career, they would have no idea what political party I belong to. They wouldn't even know that I'm political. Now, that doesn't mean I don't follow policy. I do. I'm very involved in our democracy and trying to understand what's going on. But it came to a point where I'm sitting in front of my TV wondering, Why are we not solving these problems? Because I only see solutions, which someone pointed out at one point. But I tell this story of very early on in my career that I was a research and development engineer, and on the first floor of my company, we had manufacturing. One day, very early on into my career, about a year and a half in, every single assembly worker was laid off. Their jobs were moved to Mexico. Many of them never worked a day in their life again, and none of them had any job retraining options. Throughout my career, I try to help people write their resumes, do their LinkedIn profiles, mentor other people. About six or seven years ago, I joined a non-profit, which at the time was having some challenges, so we raised tens of thousands of dollars for it. The non-profit is very dear to me. My mom's a school teacher. She's a botanist and an environmentalist. She's always taught me to give back. This non-profit does free training and education to anybody who wants it, and we built it back up into one of the most successful non-profits in the entire world. It's an international non-profit, and we built it up into a 4,000-member non-profit. During this process, what I realized is that we need to do more. We need to be able to scale what we're doing in this non-profit across this country. The realization came from this. In 2008 and 2009, when the recession hit, Austin at one point had the lowest unemployment rate in the entire country, yet there were people here that were well-educated, that owned homes in the suburbs, that were unable to pay their COBRA payments, that were unable to pay their premiums, that were being foreclosed on after owning their home for 10, 20 years because they could no longer afford it because they didn't have a job, and they were out of a job for a year, year and a half. This is what really got the fire going inside me, saying we can't just depend on people to solve our problems. We need to be part of the solution. Now, that's most of it, but I will tell you this. Every single morning, my mom calls me, and she tells me what all the things in the world are wrong, and she says, you got to do something about it. I can never escape that, and I keep telling her, what do you want me to do? There's nothing. I'm just an individual. I'm just one person, and she'll be like, no, you got to do something about it. You got to solve it. There's so many ways to do it, so this is what I encounter, and even while I'm running this race, she does this to me every single morning. I cannot escape that call. Wow, you should just lead with that. Say, well, my mom's been asking me what the heck I'm doing about it just about every day, as long as I can remember. So, Beto, can you give us some more context on what's going on in Texas in some of these races? Like, MJ Hager is running for Senate, and you're 100% right that if Texas goes blue, it's a game changer, and I think we can all imagine what's happening in November. If you imagine Donna winning, I would say that alone is a game changer, but if Texas goes blue on the national level, then it would be like an earthquake, a political earthquake that had not been seen in generations. MJ Hager winning would be also a political earthquake. I mean, we're here essentially trying to cause earthquakes, but you were the original San Andreas fault of this place, so can you talk a little bit about where Donna's race fits into what you're seeing in terms of the wave that's going to potentially upend everything we think about Texas politically? You know, Donna hit upon this. We're not, we're certainly not a blue state, but we're not a red state either. We're really a non-voting state, and prior to 2018, Texas ranked 50th dead last in voter turnout. And Andrew, it's not because we love democracy less than the people of New York State or any other state. We were literally drawn that way. We have racial gerrymandering that has been perfected into a science to exclude black Texans and Texans of color from the franchise, from their democracy, from guiding the course and direction that their community or their state or their country will take. And Donna said something earlier, Andrew, that is so profound. She talked about her district once being the home to plantations and to enslaved people, and post-slavery, post-reconstruction to the state-sponsored violence against black Texans, the lynchings, the brutality, the beatings, the forced servitude through the penal system, which was the predecessor of our prison population today. Again, disproportionately black and brown. And what people have found, scientists who've looked at this, is that there is a correlation between the enslavement of our fellow human beings in a given area, the lynchings of our fellow human beings in a given area, and the participation in our democracy in those same areas. And it tends to trend lower. When you exacerbate that with these racial gerrymandered districts, voter ID laws that are the most suppressive in the country, the fact, Andrew, that our state government, all led by Republican white men, will not allow any of us under the age of 65 to vote by mail, though none of us enjoys immunity from the deadliest virus since the year 1918. This is the most voter-suppressive state. And so that is why we rank 50th, that is why we're not red nor blue, we just have not voted. And so when I mentioned why I was so excited to endorse Donna, I talked about her ability to engage with voters, especially voters who've been left behind or actively suppressed or drawn out of our democracy. And she's literally brought them in, given them a reason to vote and to believe and to know that their vote will not be squandered or wasted, that their vote will not be taken for granted. And let's admit it, present company excluded, Democrats for decades have taken the vote of Black Americans for granted. And I am reflecting what I've heard across this state and really across this country. Donna is not doing that. And Donna is listening to and reflecting the stories that she's hearing. So, Andrew, you're right, there's huge opportunity and potential here. This is one of the most diverse states in the United States of America. And that diversity is in no way reflected in our leadership today, in our congressional delegation, or at least not to the degree that it's reflected in our population. Donna uniquely, I think, has the ability to draw in voters that look like Texas, to be a representative who looks like Texas, and to make decisions on behalf of all people in her district in the United States Congress. And really, Andrew, until we get the Democratic majority state legislature, which I think we're actually going to win, in part thanks to Donna's race and other really high energy races across the state, until we get that Democratic majority that can draw people back in, strike down these owner's voter ID laws, and begin to correct some of the injustice that has so defined the Texas experience for Black Texans and Texans of color, the next best thing that we can do is to win these races by bringing people in. And Donna is doing that. She's expanding the electorate. And so, you know, again, not only is that great for her and her race, not only is it good for Joe Biden and his ability to win the 38 electoral college votes, not only is it great down ballot for Kiki Williams to become the new state rep for that area, it is good for democracy in Texas and successfully confronting and overcoming and transcending the voter suppression that has been the hallmark of our democracy for far too long. So another really exciting reason for those of you on this call to get behind Donna. I want to echo, Andrew, we're glad that you're here, glad that you're listening, some of you following through the website, through Twitch, through Twitter. And we're glad for those of you in Donna's district who are planning to vote for her. But to be honest with you, and to be clear about what drives opportunity in this country, if you're not also donating, then you're not doing enough. She needs the money to overcome all of these institutional obstacles that I just described exist in her district, exist in this country. She has to overcome the power of incumbency, a guy who's been there for 18 years. So she needs the help. And whether it's five bucks, 15 bucks, 500 bucks, donate to this campaign, because it's not only good for her chances to win, it's great for us beyond her district, including winning the presidency. Hey, Andrew, I want to throw in two quick things before you get going, because this is important. One is, you know, we talked about closing the gap in Bell County. What a lot of people don't know is Bell County is a minority majority district, which means more than 50% of Bell County population is Black Americans, Hispanic, Latino Americans, and Asian Americans. So that's fact number one, why we're engaging these communities in a way that they've never been engaged before, with platforms like Equal Justice for All, which you can go on my website, there's a two-page paper with real solutions on how we can transform our justice system in a way where it's actionable, not just talk, okay? And the other thing I want to point out is that we talk about the Latino vote in Texas, which is extremely important to ensure that we energize and give people a reason to vote, like Beto just pointed out, but Texas has the fastest growing Asian population, which a lot of people don't know, with respect to the percentage growth, right? And Asians are on the forefront of whether it comes to academia, engineering, medicine, business, every area they have been contributing is important for us to also be represented in Congress. So this is why this, you know, event today is so exciting to me, because we have all the ingredients to get this job done. Yes, we do. And what Beto just said, it's like, we know that John Carter's got himself the corporate cash, like waiting, just like a million dollars, like, oh, who's challenging me? And then Donna needs our help. Donna needs you to step up and donate. If you're not donating, you're not doing enough. And I'm the math guy. And I'll tell you, you know, after this event, we're just going to look at how many people donated how much. That's like, Beto will be like, how do we do? So please make me and Beto feel like we nodded out of the park and donate to Donna right now. 5, 10, 15, 20, $2,000, like whatever it is. I have to say to the contrast between having this 18 year incumbent, 78 year old, John Carter, Republican representing Austin, and Donna, I'm I don't know how old you are, but I'm sure it's not it's not 78. Like, you know, and in a majority minority, like one of your counties, and they look up, I can see why they're getting excited about you, because they look at you and they think like, wow, that could be my congressperson. Like, that's different. You know, like this person seems to get me to understand what my family and I are going through, you know, to be a real resident of this district in a way that, you know, inaccessible, that's unusual. So, you know, you started your run, I know, before the COVID pandemic happened, Donna, but like, what are your thoughts on what the heck is going on in the small business community around the country, the fact that Congress has not put economic relief into folks hands? What are you seeing? Because it sounds like you're out in your district every day. And as a member of Congress, like, where would you steer the relief efforts in terms of us trying to rebuild the country in an era of COVID? Because we have to face facts that we're going to be in this era for months to come. Yeah, so you know, one of the biggest tragedies of Texas and the deaths that we're having in Texas right now due to Coronavirus, is that we actually went on a And we did not take advantage of the shutdown in the way we should have, because if we had taken advantage of the shutdown, and we'd come out of it in the right way, and we'd really done what needed to be done during the shutdown, we would not have these deaths. So today, our leadership, first of all, fumbled big time on wearing something simple as a mask. They initially made it completely not required. And not only that, they ridiculed mask wearing, which by the way, has resulted in so many people dying. And I'll tell you that my own neighbor in my neighborhood just got back from the hospital. He's very lucky. He fought for his life. And only yesterday, he texted me and he says, I'm extremely weak, and I'm trying to recover. But this didn't have to happen. And it happened because the GOP is driving us into medieval times by ignoring basic scientific facts. So that's number one. Number two, it didn't make sense for us to do a shutdown and not do it properly and not ensure that people could pay for their basic living expenses. Look, we took a $6,000 loan on every man, woman and child in this country. Yet there are so many people who still haven't gotten their $1,200 stimulus cash. There are so many people today that the $600 unemployment cash has now expired. And they're waiting. And we have a Congress that is not taking this seriously enough. We're the most technologically advanced country in the world. We have some of the smartest, brightest people. And you would think our Congress could come together and say, we have families that are burying people on a daily basis. 155,000 plus families across this country have gone through a funeral. And we're not taking this seriously. We should have done direct cash to the American people, just like you also support, which is something that I went out publicly and talked about in March. And now we are fumbling again. We are having to close down. We have to close down all the bars in Texas. We're having to close down restaurants in Texas. The GOP is killing our economy with their fake science and going around and saying that you shouldn't do this and shouldn't do that. We could have ramped up on testing very easily. We could have done contact tracing as we came out of the six-week and four-week shutdowns that we had around the country. And we could have recovered much faster. This is making us look ridiculous to the rest of the world when we have the resources, we have the smarts, and we can execute on it. That's kind of the way I feel. And I think we did a little too less too late. And now we're trying to make up for this challenge that we have. Yes, I just want to shout out some of the donors who've thrown in some money just now. And if you want to get a shout out right now, it's not too late. You can make a donation and vote for Donna, and then I'll get your name texted to me too. But we have Alice Yee, Alan Wilkins, Boyce Littlefield, Zaki Rahman, Joe Tobacco have all made significant donations to Donna. Significant, I think it's 100 bucks or more. So if you donate 100 bucks or more, you also get a shout out like this. This is like a fun radio program. But I agree with you that it really is, Donna, and I don't like to make too much of this, but it really does seem like a battle between the past and the future in your race. It's like you don't like to characterize people that way or things that way. But it really feels like that to me. You literally have this person, this 18-year incumbent, and an anti-science GOP Trump enabler versus you, the daughter of immigrants, young, science-oriented, dynamic, and engineer. The whole thing, I mean, really, come on, if you're watching this and listening to this, come on. Do you really want to live in a country where Donna did not win? I don't want to live in that country. I don't want to make a donation. They're going to look back at this and be like, holy crap. And if you make a donation, then when Donna does win, you'll say, I made that happen. That is the opportunity we have. So we do have a question from a viewer that's come in. I don't know if you can see this, Andrew, if you want to read it. Which one are you looking at? I've got a couple. So there's one from Karen who's asking about that she's on Medicare. I don't know if you can see that in front of you. Oh, yeah. Sure, I can pull that one up. So this is a question about Medicare for all, which is obviously extraordinarily important. You support Medicare for all. And Karen Darby asks, I am on Medicare and pay two separate insurance premiums in addition to the Medicare premium and deductible in order to be covered for the 80% of the expenses that Medicare pays, plus the amount I pay for prescription drug coverage. Does your plan for Medicare for all include keeping that structure? Do you want to get rid of the insurance middleman, go strictly to single pay? How like how are you envisioning this program? And what do you see as a funding mechanism? Very detailed, substantive policy question, but a very important one. Yes. And it's a really amazing question. And it's a very educational one, because what people really believe in our country is that you have Medicare, which is only available to people who are 65 or older, that you pay an amount and you're covered. But this is not true, that most people that are on Medicare have to get supplemental care in order to get this 80% coverage that she talks about. So first you pay your Medicare bill and then you pay a supplemental bill on top of that to make sure that your cost when you actually go see the doctor is not as high and you can actually afford it. So that's what she's talking about. And then she has a third payment in order to keep her prescription drug prices down. That's what she's talking about. So Karen, yes, I'm a big supporter of single payer health care, right? Which is synonymous in many cases to Medicare for all. And I believe that not because of politics, but because this is the most cost efficient and financially responsible way to bring health care to every single person in this country. And if we implement a single payer health care, then no, you wouldn't have two or three or five different payments to just to get your health care. That's number one. But what I'm proposing in health care for all is very, very simple, which is that we have to lower the cost of health care. It doesn't matter what the solution is. We have to lower the cost of health care. And the way we do that is we have to focus on preventative care. Now, in 2018, we paid $3.68 trillion, $3.68 trillion. And every single study says that if we went to single payer health care, we would spend somewhere between $2 trillion and $3 trillion. So last I checked, that's a lot less than $3.68 trillion. That's your number one savings. But here's where my plan lowers costs even more. What I'm talking about is that we have a lack of primary care physicians, nurses, and PAs in our system. This is a known fact that if we address problems at the primary care level, and we provide preventative care, we will not use ER as our front line of defense. And you see in COVID-19, Latinos and Hispanics in Texas are dying at a much higher rate than the population that they represent. And the reason that they do this, this is happening not only in Latino population, but also black population is that they have underlying conditions. And the reason that they have underlying conditions is very simple. They have not been able to take care of their health for years, for decades, haven't been able to go to a doctor and get basic procedures done. So when coronavirus hits them, they're unable to fight it. So what I believe my plan will do is it will drive the cost of single payer health care lower than $2 trillion. That's my answer to Karen. And yes, we would all be covered under one plan. And number two is a lot of people think that we're going to need years to transition. We won't. And this is the reason we won't. When you have an emergency, when your child is sick, what do you want to do? You rush them to the emergency room. This is an emergency for us. We had 155,000 families lose a loved one. This is an emergency for our country, and we need to solve it now. But before we go on, I think Beto, a lot of people want to hear their names shouted out by you. So we got to get them done. These are some very familiar names to me. And I want to thank every person who's making a donation. It really doesn't matter how big or how small. It is impactful to Donna, again, for all of us and what we want to see for this country. But Mehedi, Bakht, Kristen Reed, Pat Butter, Becky Bullard, Ashley Chang, Cameron Russian, you are all each hosts for this, big contributors, and we want everyone else to follow your lead. So thank you for making these Yes, and I want to thank you the most because my opponent has a million dollars of cash on hand, and I know we can win this race. There is nothing stopping us from winning this race if we have the resources to get our message to the voter. And by the way, we've tested this. We tested this on March 3rd. We tested it on July 14th, and we got out the vote. When we get our message to voters, they come out and vote for our campaign, for our message. And it's the same message that Beto has, which he brought in 2018. It's the same message that Andrew Yang has, which he's brought in 2020. It's the message that if we come together, we can solve our biggest problems. And with that, I want to do some shout outs here, too, to Wade Roquemore and Suzanne Roquemore. I actually know them. They live in my district. And then I have Scott Rudiger, who is also from Georgetown, Texas, who also lives in my district. And we have Chris Merchure from Ithaca, New York. Well, thank you all the way from New York supporting a Texas race right here. We have Chris Howard in Austin, Texas, right here in our neighborhood. We have Fafida Faizullah from Collieville, Texas. We have John Rothgeb from Austin, Texas. Kausar Jamal from Santa Clara, California. I also know Kausar. And Shah Halim from Katy, Texas, someone I also know and has been a supporter of our campaign. Thank you so much. This means a lot. And I tell everybody that every single dollar counts. And if you can't get $500 and you can get $250, do that. And if you can't even give $5, here's my request to you and my challenge to you all. Donate $1. And you know why I say that? Because once you've donated that $1, now you are part of our movement, our solutions for our district, for our country. You are part of this campaign when you come together with us. We hear you. And I know that a lot of people out there are struggling today, that they don't have sufficient funds to maybe donate to a campaign. But when I see those $1 donations, I know what you're telling us. You're saying, Donna, I'm with you. We want these solutions. And we want to solve our problems together. So we hear everything from $1 all the way to $2,800 for our campaign. We're going to get this done. We're going to flip this district blue. And we're going to help M.J. Hager win the Senate. And we're going to flip Texas blue. It's happening. And it might have started with Beto, but we're going to finish the job. And he's counting on us. Yes. Oh, that was incredible, Donna. I agree. We need more people that Donna does not know personally to donate to Donna's campaign. We have to make it so she's like, I have no idea who this person is. And they're from someplace far, far away. I think they assigned some people that I know, just so that you know. Well, I could tell you, I vividly remember the time when I knew everyone who donated to my campaign. Beto remembers too, from his first congressional runs. He's like, everyone is someone you know. And then it gets much, much bigger than that. And you're exactly at that point, Donna. There are going to be a lot of people supporting you from around the country that believe in you and your message. You're such an important force and voice for progress. And you're going to make a fantastic U.S. congressperson a little bit later this year. And so I agree with you that Beto started this wave. So let's have Beto wrap up this wave with his final message to folks about how we're going to turn Texas blue in just a few short months. Beto, thank you, my friend. Andrew, thanks for doing this. And I got to tell you something. As big a name as you are in this country and throughout the state of Texas, and I can testify to that, you're in El Paso, Texas. And for whoever knows my name in Donna's district, there's one big gun that Donna has yet to bring out, and that is Little Joe Hernandez from Little Joe y la Familia, perhaps the best Tejano band the world has ever known, a living legend. And before Andrew Yang called me to talk about doing something for Donna, Little Joe Hernandez called me to talk about doing something for Donna. So when you are someone who gets Andrew Yang behind you, who gets Little Joe Hernandez behind you, who increases voter turnout by 233 percent, folks, we're not talking about, you know, 5 percent or 10 percent, we're talking 233 percent over the biggest turnout election this state had ever had in 2018. When you have somebody who can speak to the aspirations of so many of us, regardless of where we came from, who we love, where we are right now, she's just focused on where we want to go together as a country. Andrew said it so well, don't you want to live in a country that would elect Donna to Congress? It would say this person needs to be in a position of public trust and power because she knows what it's like to be in my shoes, to live my life, because she's listened to me. She's been here. She's reaching out to each and every single one of us. And the last thing that I want to say, and it's perhaps the most important thing, beyond our ability to send Donna to Congress and to make decisions on our behalf, and that's really important, her ability to bring in net new voters who have been disengaged or actively suppressed from the political process in the past, to bring them to the ballot box, to vote for her, but also to vote for candidates down the ballot from state rep to county commissioner and up the ballot, including for U.S. Senate, where M.J. Hagar can beat John Cornyn, and for the presidency, where Texas, the largest battleground state, could define and determine the end of the Trump administration and the beginning of a necessary new chapter for our country. This is exciting stuff. And it's only possible if every one of us gets behind Donna. You saw what happened to Andrew Yang's campaign, where his donor and supporter base went from his close family and friends to just literally everybody in the universe. We need something like that to happen for Donna right now, to take on and successfully defeat this nine-term, 18-year incumbent, this enabler of Donald Trump. So please do what you can. Support her to the maximum you are capable of doing. So if it's $2,800, great. If it's just a dollar, as Donna said, that's important too. So Donna, thank you for running. Andrew, thank you for hosting. And everybody on this call, thank you for joining in and getting actively involved in our democracy. Cannot think of anything more important at this moment. Let's finish what Beto started and turn Texas blue, and let's help Donna win in just a few short months. Thank you, everyone watching this. Thank you. The way you can thank us is donate a dollar or more to Donna's campaign. Again, numbers people, we crave numbers. So please, if Donna gets the resources where she's anywhere close to her opponent, she wins. I think we can all say that, bar none. 100%. By the way, I'm going to promise you that. I'm going to make this promise. If we get a million dollars, we're going to flip this district blue. I'm making this promise on video, so you're going to hold me to it. Yeah, and let's hold her to it. Let's get her the million bucks and make sure then that we can hold her to that pledge. And I'm sure she's right, because if she has a million dollars, I mean, you can see that face on those ads juxtaposed against this income. People will be like, who represents us? What's going on? That'll be the way it's going to go. So votefordonna.com. Beto, thank you so much, my friend. All the best to Amy and the rest of the family. Donna, we'll be with you every step of the way. We're going to be there with you. We're going to fight alongside you and get this done and get it done in all of Texas. Awesome. Thank you all. Thanks all. Have a great night.