Former San Antonio Rep. Will Hurd announced on Thursday his bid to win the 2024 Republican nomination for president. He is campaigning with a sharpened anti-Donald Trump message.
The former undercover CIA officer has been critical of Trump but while he served in Congress representing the South Texas 23rd Congressional District he voted for the Trump agenda more than 80% of the time. Hurd voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act and for the Trump tax cuts. He also voted in favor of a national ban on abortion.
But Hurd did counter Trump on his signature issue, the border wall.
Since leaving Congress, Hurd has worked in the private sector, specializing in cyber security and artificial intelligence, which he calls major threats to national security.
After declaring his candidacy for president, Hurd spoke to TPR’s David Martin Davies about his campaign and Trump.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
David Martin Davies: A lot of people are not familiar with the name, Will Hurd, across the country. Many will say "Will who?" How are you going to change that?
Will Hurd: David, you probably have some sense when I first ran for Congress in 2009, people are like, Will, what? This isn't rocket science. It's about taking a message to places that haven't seen it, haven't heard it before. And it's about talking about what people care about. And you'd be surprised what my, as you say in the business, my "name ID" is and in other places, but I'm going to do what I always do in the 23rd Congressional District when I represented that, which was larger than 26 states, by the way,
I'm going to show up and talk about things people care about. It's not rocket science. It's old-fashioned hard work. And here's the reality: 23% of Americans vote in primaries. That means 77% of Americans don't. And one of the reasons they don't vote is because they don't think there's people in the races talking about things that matter and that they care about.
Davies: You've looked at the numbers. You know it's a crowded field. Over 12 [people] now have declared they're running for the Republican nomination for president. So how did you decide, "Okay, I need to get in and that there is a lane for me"?
Hurd: Options are a good thing. So, we could be excited when there are more options in having these conversations. So, it starts with that. The part that frustrates me was that there's nobody talking about the issues, that what I consider to be a generational defining challenge is everything from how the Chinese government is trying to surpass the United States of America as a global superpower, to how are we going to deal with persistent inflation at a time when new technologies like artificial intelligence are going to upend every industry — and not in 20 years, but in two or three years. Those things. And that's the path. And I recognize that I'm a dark horse candidate, but this is a path that we've researched and understand and now is out there, and we're going to spend the next couple months building the organization to capitalize on it.
Davies: You do talk about the chaos that's been created by this lawless failed politician, Donald Trump. You are definitely going straight after Trump and calling him out for his problems. Can you talk more about that?
Hurd: To me, it's real simple. And you know, I saw this when I was in Congress, and he was president. You see it, you see it now. He's only focused on the past. He's only complaining about the past, the fact that he's still complaining about an election that he lost. He’s not talking about our future. He's only worried about his future. And that's a problem. America deserves and demands something better than that. And this latest case — nobody is above the law and you're innocent until proven guilty in this recent indictment in this case with the documents. We wouldn't be in this conversation. We wouldn't be having these debates if he just gave the documents back. It's that simple. And the kinds of documents that he had, based on the classifications, was stuff that came from our most sensitive human sources.
It was stuff that came from our technical intelligence and from our satellites, all of those things. And information when put in the wrong hands could lead to the loss of American lives. And Donald Trump showed he didn't care. And to me, that's not something that you want in a president. And then when you explain why you kept them, because you were worried your shirts and your shoes were in the boxes that those documents were in [the boxes]? To me that's just absolutely outrageous. And again, if the Republican Party nominates Donald Trump for our Republican nominee for president, then we are willingly electing Joe Biden for four more years — and we just can't have that.
Davies: And then all the down ballot stuff as well?
Hurd: Sure. I go back to people ... there's recent polling that shows Donald Trump would win head-to-head with, Joe Biden. And it's like, it's crazy to me. This isn't rocket science. Donald Trump has not won an election since 2016. And polling does not anticipate who will vote. It is a snapshot in time. And I remind folks that in 2022, the night before the election, most people were still predicting a red wave where Republicans were going to take more than 30 seats. And we didn't — partly because of Donald Trump. Donald Trump lost the house in 2018. He lost the Senate and the White House in 2020. He prevented a red wave in 2022. And if Donald Trump's on the ballot, we are going to get four more years of Joe Biden, and all the other candidates that are up and down the ballot are going to have a weight around their neck.
Davies: Back to your experience working with the CIA and understanding the toll and human cost to obtain this information, these national security secrets and how they ended up in Donald Trump's bathroom in Mar-a-Lago. What does that say to you? Maybe he was just keeping them because of some compulsion, but still how vulnerable was that information to other countries to acquire?
Hurd: So again, the kinds of data that we're in Mar-a-Lago would show us what our capabilities are, and so our enemies would know what we're able to do. And you can't easily come back from that. But the other thing that is frustrating to me is why hasn't Donald Trump said ... what steps did he take to protect those documents when they were at his place in Mar-a-Lago? What security did he have in place to ensure that his staff and the members that go there weren't being targeted by our adversaries like the Chinese government and the Russian government? We know adversaries like the Russian and the Chinese to take [such steps] in order to pursue intelligence and information. And so, what was Donald Trump doing, knowingly, that he had that kind of information? Why wasn't he protecting it? And ultimately the question is, why wasn't he protecting the lives of our brothers and sisters, our spouses, our sons and daughters who are putting themselves in harm's way every single day and every single night to protect us? Why wasn't Donald Trump protecting them as well, too? And what steps did he take to do that? Those are the questions I want to hear him answer.
