next guest s performance at the debate last night. joining us is former hud secretary, former mayor of san antonio and contender for the 2020 democratic presidential nomination, julian castro, you had a great night last night. fun to watch. one of those interviewers in new hampshire, just a random statement picked out said something that really focused on the key to your performance last night. that was what we have been talking about for a year now. who is the person who when you have donald trump standing on one side of the the stage and the democrat on the other side, who can stand up to donald trump. i think a lot of people saw your performance last night and said, maybe that guy. i think a lot of people were surprised. i haven t gotten as much coverage so far in the campaign. but i have been traveling. i think to 20 states already. and last night what people saw
came at you on immigration and so forth sort of creating that separation between him and you. everyone else didn t do that. it surprised me. i thought there would be a little more, just punching to the right or the left. right. go ahead. so i just feel like my responsibility on that stage is to describe and define what i want to do for this country, and the way in which i want to do it. i m not running against anybody. i m running for the united states of america, so i wanted to outline our vision, the means that would allow us to achieve it. i understand other folks had other strategies and other goals during that debate, but on some of he s big issues like immigration ending family separation, stopping the practice of putting kids in cages or sending their parents back to the very countries from which they fled, ensuring that there s accountability for the children who have died within our custody and the practices that produced that heartbreaking image that we all saw of oscar
to make an argument and they are going to have to fight that battle every day with donald trump. i want to say one thing. to go back to my informal panel of democratic communicators, the group that eddie picked out there, if you think about unanimity among democratic sources who did well last night. the person who most radically improved is castro, wo came from almost nowhere to widespread. you look at the social media feedback, he was nowhere before the debate. cory booker had a good night in a lot of people s judgment. and amy klobuchar, a lot of men in the democratic political class were kind of like, eh, and all of the women thought she did incredibly well. so it was just a really striking pattern for female democrats were like, wow, amy was great. not that she did badly. three women on stage and we are talking about them
at the end, she was still the front runner on this stage. she was stil in the top tier and because she was so strong in the first part of the debate, she made a lot of points out of her campaign stump speech she just rammed home in the first half an hour to 45 minutes. she walks out of here in better place than she started the night and in a better position to be the nominee. i always am talking to a bunch of former obama communicators and people on rival campaigns, a dozen and a a half people over the course of the night, everyone said elizabeth warren had a great night. no dispute whatsoever. i saw and i ll take it to adrian. but i saw some really great things for women happening with elizabeth warren last night. because she was aggressive, she was pissed off, she was clear
fact checked, true. over and over again, i thought the candidates did last night and they did it well, is to point to in some ways the seriousness of the problems we face as a country. and to do that with a fact-based reality. and that juxtaposition. it you tell your reader every time you re about to do something, the reader says you don t trust it. so on the stage last night, the candidates said we trust you america to listen substantiate ive ly to our policy positions. that s a good thing for democrats to do. in the works, circular firing squad, the winners, losers and the other losers from the first debate. in the course of two hours, various democratic candidates for president argued for tax rates, abolishing private health insurance, unfettered abortion with no restrictions whatsoever, either the buyback or outright