Julián Castro Says That Irony of People Telling His Generation That They Don’t Speak Spanish Well Is a ‘Bullshit One’

Feb 13, 2019
9:08 AM

In a Latino USA podcast published on Wednesday morning, Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro told host Maria Hinojosa that the irony of people telling his generation that many of them don’t speak Spanish is a “bullshit one.”

“It’s very ironic that they used to tell our mothers and our grandmothers, and grandfathers and fathers, ‘you’re not good enough because you don’t speak English well enough.’ And then they’re turning around telling their grandsons, ‘you’re not good enough because you don’t speak Spanish well enough. I mean, that is quite an irony. And I think it’s a bullshit one,” Castro told Hinojosa on the podcast.

“Did you just say BS?” Hinojosa asked.

“I did,” Castro responded.

The comments arose from a conversation Castro was having with Hinojosa about President Trump’s rhetoric towards Mexicans and Mexican Americans, as well as to the reaction from Tom Brokaw’s words that Latinos in this country are not assimilating.

The full Latino USA podcast with Castro is below:

This is not the first time the Democratic candidate dropped a “bullshit” line in public interviews. On February 2, in an interview with New York magazine, he said this about a 2010 headline that called him the “The Post-Hispanic Hispanic Politician.” He was asked if he was offended by the headline:

“No, I mean, first of all, I think like 50 percent of headlines are bullshit,” he said. “Headlines in newspapers and magazines. Headline writers, collectively, need to be better in touch with reality. It was caught up in a moment postelection of the president in 2008.”

Editor’s Note: Latino Rebels is part of Futuro Media, the company that also produces Latino USA.