-Our next guest is a former United States Congressman
and currently the Democratic nominee for governor of Texas.
Please welcome back to the show Beto O'Rourke, everyone.
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
Welcome back!
It's always lovely to have you back in New York City.
We talked last time about how you spent some time in Brooklyn.
You had Busta Rhymes' -- an old trampoline from Busta Rhymes
on the roof of your apartment, which is a pretty cool thing.
-Very cool thing. -Yeah.
-A big memory.
-Yeah. -Yeah, yeah.
-You also drove -- One of your jobs when you were
living in Brooklyn is you drove around famous artwork?
-I worked for a company called Hedley's Humpers.
-Okay.
[ Laughter ]
-And we would receive and crate pieces of art
that were bought by our customers,
and then deliver them to their homes.
And so, yeah, I would be driving down the streets of New York
in a box truck with amazing pieces of art.
One time I was able to handle a Picasso...
-Wow. -...if you can believe this.
You know, what am I, 23 years old, and I've got
a Picasso in my hands delivering for a client.
-I was going to say, it's a terrible --
Hedley Humpers is a terrible name,
except I don't think anyone would ever think
a Picasso would be in a truck... -Right.
-Like, you would be like, "Well, that's probably just full
of old pillows or something."
-Right, right, right.
But amazing people who worked there.
Most of them were artists. I was not.
One guy -- went on to have a great career -- named Dave Ford,
who does these amazing interactive sculptures,
including one that he developed by putting canvas
down on the floor of the truck
and then hanging drawing implements from the ceiling,
and it would record this kind of kinetic map
of our journeys along the way.
And, you know, now you can't get your hands on them
because they're so valuable.
But amazing experience. Loved living in New York.
But soon enough, I knew I needed to be back in Texas.
-Yes. -Because that's where I'm from.
My family's there.
And I just missed the state, missed home.
-So, back in Texas,
you're running against Governor Greg Abbott.
And obviously, you know, Texas --
He, you know, banned abortion after six weeks.
And that, I think, is scary enough,
but he also implemented this bounty law.
Can you explain exactly how harrowing
this element of his law is?
-Yeah, so, there's a law in force right now
that is a six-week abortion ban
with a $10,000 bounty placed on the back of anyone
who assists any woman
in making her own decision about her own life,
her own body, her own health care.
But it's actually worse because
he also signed what is known as a trigger bill,
which means that if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade,
which is likely to happen, it triggers a total abortion ban
beginning at conception,
with no exception for rape and no exception for incest.
And that's happening in a state that leads
much of the developed world in a crisis of maternal mortality.
It means that our moms and women
are dying faster than almost anywhere else
because as you close down
all these reproductive health-care clinics,
not only is it harder to get an abortion,
it's harder to get a cervical cancer screening
or to see a family planning provider
or to get a doctor at all
in the least-insured state in the country.
So this is deeply, deeply harmful,
and, frankly, deadly to the women of Texas.
That's why we've got to win this race, win political power,
and get the state back on the right track
so every woman can make her own decision about her own body,
her own future, and her own health care.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-There is, um --
I think it's so important.
You don't want to get in a situation where you're always
saying the sky is falling, and yet, when Donald Trump
appointed these new Supreme Court justices,
a lot of people said
they're gonna overturn Roe v. Wade.
So the sky was falling.
So I know I'm putting you in a tough position,
but what do you think --
It's bad enough with the abortion ban,
but what do you think Governor Abbott might do next,
empowered with this ability
to take these steps that he's already taken?
-I saw a headline today.
You know, some of his colleagues in the state legislature
are talking about a law that would stop Texas women
from traveling to other states
to seek their constitutional right to an abortion.
And this is stuff that maybe is happening
because of a failure of imagination on our part.
Like, "There's no way this is going to happen,"
and it is now happening.
"There's no way it could get worse,"
but it will, unless we change course.
The encouraging thing that I can share with you from Texas
is that the people of Texas want better.
A majority of us do.
We had a rally on Saturday in Houston
for reproductive health-care rights.
5,000 people came out on three days' notice.
It was the largest reproductive health-care rally
in the country, and it happened in the place you'd maybe
least expect it to happen in, which is Texas.
But I think that reflects the majority of us there,
who not only want to make sure that our rights are protected,
but they want us to get focused on the big things
that we can all actually agree on,
like the kind of jobs we want to create,
focusing on our public schools,
getting the backs of our public-school educators,
expanding Medicaid, which we haven't done in Texas,
though most of the rest of the country has,
so that people are healthy enough and well enough
to live to their full potential.
Those are the things that we want to do.
The abortion ban,
this crazed focus on transgender kids
and arresting their parents for child abuse,
permitless carry, the failure of the power grid --
that's reflective of current leadership,
not of the state of Texas.
My job as a candidate
is to go out and meet the people of Texas
to bring them into this election.
We do that, and I'm confident we're gonna win in November.
-Alright. I got some more questions for you.
We'll be right back with more from Beto O'Rourke.