WASHINGTON – Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) joined The Moment with Jorge and Paola Ramos to talk Latino voters, immigration, Democrats’ path forward, authenticity, and the American Dream.
Watch the conversation here in English with Spanish subtitles and read excerpts below:
On authenticity and trust in politics:
Gallego: “I think for me, the most important thing that I’ve learned is to be your authentic self and just talk about your beliefs as well as you can, as authentically as you can is going to kind of travel further than [to] try and engage in this left-right-center kind of calculation. I saw that during the campaign. […] Most voters don’t vote on any of these terms, they vote on who they trust. […] And I think there are Trump supporters that trust AOC, Zohran, and Bernie more than some political Democrats or really political Republicans, and they’ll look past some certain positions. I think that’s one of the things Democrats need to figure out is how to trust the voters.”
On the American Dream:
Paola Ramos: “You are in many ways the reflection of the American Dream. But this is also a time where a majority of Latinos believe that the American Dream is dying. Do you think that it’s alive?”
Gallego: “I think it’s barely hanging on. I needed the American Dream growing up. Growing up poor sucks. It was hard. It was mentally draining trying to figure out how to help my mom, keep the family afloat, how to keep my sanity, how to keep my motivation working after school, studying at night, competing against all these other kids that had like a lot more advantages to me. But I always knew that it was all going to be worth it. I knew it because I saw other people doing it. Like okay, if I go to college, then I get money, and then I could do this and I can help my family.
Right now, talking to working class Latinos, immigrants, or just working-class people in general, they really feel that the whole system is rigged against them, that even if they work hard, that they’re not going to make it. And even worse, they believe that their kids are going to be worse off than they are. And like, as parents, you sacrifice everything to bring stability, to bring a future, and you could really care less how bad you’re doing as long as you know that your kids are going to be better. Right now, people don’t feel that.
And a lot of it’s because we stopped – I think Democrats, Republicans just stopped really investing in the stuff that made that possible. College being affordable, training programs, housing being affordable, like we just haven’t really actually tackled these big issues because they’ve kind of gotten worse and worse a little by a little over time. But it’s just draining these people. People right now want to buy a home, like 40-year-old people right now can’t buy homes, and then they compare themselves to their parents who bought their homes at 25. They feel like shit, and we don’t really respond. I mean, I try to, but I think we in general – politics – don’t really respond to that kind of despair because a lot of people feel like they’ve been betrayed.”
10/29/25