Democratic presidential candidate and former Housing Secretary Julián Castro lashed out Sunday at President Donald Trump's "biggest lie" — going “back on his word” on universal background checks for gun owners.
In an interview on NBC News’ “Meet The Press,” Castro decried the "inaction" out of Washington despite increasingly frequent mass shootings — the latest on Saturday in Odessa, Texas.
“This kind of inaction… the talk that we heard today … it’s the same old thing,” he said of GOP lawmakers reacting to the latest gun violence carnage.
“You know it’s happy talk and this promise that ‘we’re going to do something, we’re going to look at it’ but they never actually do it, he continued.
”I mean the biggest lie that the president has told includes that he is going to do something about universal background checks. He said that twice. After Parkland and then after El Paso and Dayton, and he’s gone back on his word.
“Those are the biggest things that count for this president.”
Castro also said if he were elected, he could “reassemble and supercharge” the Obama coalition to power a Democratic takeover of the White House.
“[W]hen Democrats have won, it's because they've taken a bit of a risk, whether it was Kennedy in 1960 or Carter in 1976 or Barack Obama in 2008,” he said.
“And we need to get people off the sidelines in 2020. I believe that I can reassemble the Obama coalition and then supercharge that so that we can go back and win Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and then also get the 29 electoral votes of Florida, the 11 electoral votes of Arizona and I believe, even the 38 electoral votes of Texas.”
Of the current Democratic frontrunner, former Vice President Joe Biden, Castro criticized his stance on healthcare.
“Joe Biden and I have some different disagreements, he said. “I also believe that he hasn't gone far enough on healthcare. We need to base our healthcare off of a Medicare system and then allow for a private option.”
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