Former HUD Secretary Julian Castro (D-Texas) is one of many Democrats running for president. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

(CNSNews.com) - Former HUD Secretary and current presidential hopeful Julian Castro defended his twin brother, Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), on Sunday for taking "publicly available information" about 44 Trump donors and tweeting out their names as well as the names of their employers.

"I'm very proud of my brother," Julian Castro told MSNBC's "Kasie DC."

My brother took what is publicly available information that newspapers, other publications regularly do about people who maxed out, made the maximum contribution to President Trump here in San Antonio and he put that forward, as he said, as a lament to say, wow, just look. In the city that is more than 63 percent Hispanic, a lot of these big business owners who were on this list who have basically made their fortune off the Hispanic community are putting money into the pocket of a campaign of a president that is turning around and using that money to fund something like 2,000 ads that say that there's Hispanic invasion in the United States. I find that very disappointing, very ironic and, you know, I believe that my brother had every right to do that, and that people should know who was funding that campaign of hate. I believe that's completely legitimate information, and, you know, I think that one of the reasons that Donald Trump tweeted at my brother is because he must be afraid that people are ashamed that they gave to him or something.

‘Disarming hate’

On another topic, Castro explained his "disarming hate' campaign intended to prevent mass shootings:

What we see out there is that we have this very toxic brew of growing white supremacy, white nationalism extremism combined with lax gun laws, and we need to address both of those things to disarm hate. So, my plan would do two things. Number one, it would give the tools to the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice and other federal agencies that they need in order to root out extremism, including white nationalism. One of the things that's happened over the last couple of years in the Trump administration is that one of the primary agencies that is supposed to root out extremism, to counter it, domestic extremism, has had their budget cut by 85 percent. We need to restore that and we need to give them additional resources so that they can do their job. I also believe we need to do things like invest in community groups that are fostering cross culture understanding in the United States, so that instead of seeing our differences as something to fear, more and more Americans, especially youngest Americans can appreciate those differences. The second thing we need to do is common sense gun safety legislation.

Castro said common sense legislation includes a new assault weapons ban, universal background checks, and limited magazine capacities.

"I would also require that someone get a license to own a firearm," Castro said. "I would impose a seven-day waiting period for firearms purchases.

"I would also put an excise of 20 percent instead of just 10 percent on firearms and ammunition and use that $600 million to $700 million a year to invest in gun violence prevention, so that we see the last of these types of incidents, not only in the mass shooting context but also in every kind of gun violence that we see in our country."