Beto O'Rourke explains why he doesn't want Trump in El Paso

Patrick Devine
Updated

Democratic presidential candidate, and former Texas Congressman Beto O'Rourke, joined Chris Cuomo in El Paso, Texas, where O’Rourke continued to blame President Trump and his racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric for the weekend's mass shooting. When it comes to his hometown, O’Rourke tweeted that the president has “no place” in El Paso following the shooting.

The former representative from El Paso doubled down on that tweet when speaking with Cuomo: "You only have an attack like this when you have a president who gives people permission to act on this hatred and this racism and this intolerance. We must connect those dots. If we fail to do that, we're complicit in the violence we will continue to see across America."

The El Paso shooting has claimed 22 lives and is being treated as a case of domestic terrorism. O'Rourke pointed to the rise in hate crimes since Trump came into power and cited additional examples of Trump's rhetoric manifesting into crimes like the Tree of Life shooter's reference to “migrant caravans” and an arson attack on a Texas mosque that occurred on the same day Trump called for a Muslim travel ban.

Earlier in the day, President Trump publicly condemned white supremacy and racism in the wake of the weekend's shootings. So when Cuomo asked Beto for a response to the president's comments, Beto quickly pointed out the president’s hypocrisy: “This is the same man who called white nationalist and clansmen and neo-Nazis very fine people. who asked for more immigrants that looked like those from Sweden and Norway, the whitest places on the planet. While describing immigrants from Haiti as full of aids or countries in Africa as shit hole nations. “This is the most racist perhaps that we've had since Andrew Johnson.”

Cuomo Prime Time airs weeknights at 9 p.m. on CNN.

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