O’Rourke says Trump’s behavior during El Paso visit shows ‘how sick this guy is’
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke said President Trump’s behavior while visiting victims of the El Paso, Texas, shooting last week shows “how sick” the president is.
O’Rourke, a former Texas congressman, said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that “not a single patient” in two El Paso hospitals after the shooting, which killed 22 people, “wanted to see the president.”
{mosads}”That says it all, if you ask me. But for him then to focus on comparing political rallies — or on himself or on how much people love him — just shows you how sick this guy is and how [he’s] unfit for this office. He should be consoling people,” he said.
A video released of Trump’s visit shows him boasting to hospital workers about the crowd size at his El Paso rally.
“That was some crowd,” Trump said in the video. “And we had twice the number outside. And then you had this crazy Beto. Beto had 400 people in a parking lot.”
O’Rourke has repeatedly pointed to Trump’s rhetoric as blame for the shooting. The accused shooter allegedly wrote a manifesto ahead of the shooting about a “Hispanic invasion.”
Trump denies that his rhetoric helped inspire the shooting.
“The people of El Paso told me that they didn’t want to see the president and they didn’t want him to come here,” O’Rourke said Sunday.
“They understand that he is part of the problem … his description of El Paso as one of the most dangerous cities in the U.S. … helped to cause somebody to drive more than 600 miles to kill people in this community,” he said.
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.