Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke said on Sunday that President Trump’s recent retweet of a conspiracy theory related to the death of Jeffrey Epstein in prison is the president’s latest attempt to change the national conversation.
“This is another example of our president using this position of public trust to attack his political enemies with unfounded conspiracy theories and also to try and force you and me and all of us to focus on his bizarre behavior,” O’Rourke told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”
“He’s changing the conversation if we allow him to do that then we will never be able to focus on the true problem, of which he is a part.” {mosads}
O’Rourke, a former Texas congressman, said the focus should remain on finding solutions for gun control and reducing domestic terrorism in the wake of two mass shootings that killed 31 people last week.
In O’Rourke’s home city of El Paso, Texas, 22 people were killed in a Walmart. The accused shooter allegedly wrote a manifesto ahead of the shooting about a “Hispanic invasion.”
O’Rourke has repeatedly said Trump’s words are to blame in part for inspiring the attack, which the president has denied.
Trump promoted the conspiracy theory on Twitter about Epstein’s death on Saturday night. It blames former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton on Epstein’s death without providing evidence.
Bill Clinton’s spokesman, Angel Ureña, responded by writing “Ridiculous, and of course not true — and Donald Trump knows it. Has he triggered the 25th Amendment yet?”
Epstein had been indicted on sex-trafficking charges.
Officials on Saturday said he died overnight by an apparent suicide while in jail.