Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke has again blamed Donald Trump for the mass shooting in El Paso that killed 22 people.
The former Texas congressman, who comes from El Paso, said the Walmart massacre earlier this month was a ‘consequence and cost’ of President Trump.
He linked the mass killing to Trump’s ‘racism’ and his rhetoric over migrants at the border, after the president previously branded Mexicans ‘rapist and criminals’.
On NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ O’Rourke said: ‘It wasn’t until that moment that I truly understood how critical this moment is and the real consequence and cost of Donald Trump.
‘There is a concerted, organized attack against immigrants, against people of color, against those who do not look like or pray like or love like the majority in this country.’
O’Rourke also referencing the recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in Mississippi that caught nearly 700 undocumented migrant workers.
He added: ‘And this moment will define us one way or another. And if we do not wake up to it, I am convinced that we’ll lose America, this country, in our sleep. And we cannot allow that to happen.’
Although the suspect in the El Paso shooting said he was not influenced by Trump, he posted a 2,000-word manifesto online moments before the attack that referenced the president’s claims of an ‘invasion’ of migrants into the US.
O’Rourke echoed the call by many Democrats to ban assault weapons, including the semiautomatic version of an AK-47 used in the El Paso shooting.
The 2020 presidential hopeful also called it a ‘weapon of war…that no American should own, unless they are on a battlefield, engaged with the enemy’.
The former Texas congressman described what he called the danger of Trump’s ‘open racism’ as the president pushes to get a border wall built.
He said; ‘From the outset of this campaign, even before this campaign, I talked about how dangerous President Trump’s open racism is, the Mexicans as rapists and criminals, the Muslims, who should be banned from this country, how it doesn’t just offend us, but it changes us, the rise in hate crimes, every single one of the last three years, the mosque in Victoria, Texas, burned to the ground the day after he signs his executive order attempting to ban Muslim travel.
But it wasn’t until someone, inspired by Donald Trump, drove more than 600 miles, to my hometown, and killed 22 people in my community with a weapon of war, an AK-47, that he had no business owning, that no American should own, unless they are on a battlefield, engaged with the enemy.
It wasn’t until that moment that I truly understood how critical this moment is and the real consequence and cost of Donald Trump.
‘And I saw it again yesterday, in Mississippi, in Canton, in a community where nearly 700 people working in chicken processing plants, one of the toughest jobs in America, were raided, detained, taken from their kids, humiliated, hogtied, for the crime of being in this country, doing a job that no one else will do.
‘There is a concerted, organized attack against immigrants, against people of color, against those who do not look like or pray like or love like the majority in this country.
‘And this moment will define us one way or another. And if we do not wake up to it, I am convinced that we’ll lose America, this country, in our sleep. And we cannot allow that to happen.’