Beto O’Rourke called Donald Trump ‘sick’ Sunday for boasting about the crowd size at his February rally in El Paso, Texas while he was visiting a hospital in the aftermath of the deadly shooting that shook the city last weekend.
‘People in El Paso told me that they didn’t want to see the president, and they didn’t want him to come here,’ the 2020 candidate told CNN.
‘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 unfit for this office – he should be consoling people, bringing people together, focusing on their pain and improving their lives and instead he’s focused on himself,’ O’Rourke, who returned to his home in El Paso when news of the shooting broke, continued.
Trump made visit to both El Paso and Dayton, Ohio on Wednesday after a combined 31 people were killed in two separate mass shootings.
Beto O’Rourke, 2020 contender and former Texas congressman, said people didn’t want Donald Trump to visit El Paso in the aftermath of the deadly shooting there last weekend. He also said his approach to the visit was ‘sick’
‘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 unfit for this office,’ O’Rourke said Sunday
The president visited University Medical Center in El Paso on Wednesday – where some victims of the shooting, which killed 22, were still being treated
There were mixed reactions from the two communities and politicians when the president announced he would be making the visits, including outcry that he was not wanted there.
O’Rourke, who represented El Paso when he was a Democratic congressman, said his former constituents know that Trump contributed to creating the problem where the two shooters felt emboldened to carry out the violent acts.
‘They understand that he’s part of the problem,’ O’Rourke said. ‘Not a single patient at University Medical Center or at Del Sol Hospital, two hospitals caring for survivors of that attack, wanted to see the president. That says it all if you ask me.’
After a shooter killed 22 at an El Paso Walmart Saturday and another young, white shooter in Dayton killed nine – including his sister – just hours later many Democrats called Trump a ‘racist’ and claimed his ‘white nationalist’ rhetoric was to blame for the massacres.
When CNN’s Jake Tapper asked O’Rourke if voting for Trump in 2020 would be racist, the Texan said, ‘I think it is really hard after everything that we’ve seen.’
He also pleaded that Americans voted for someone in 2020 that would bring the country together.
‘Yes, Donald Trump is dangerous to the future of America and will destroy what makes us so unique and so special and the genius that we represent to ourselves and to the rest of the world,’ he said from El Paso.
‘And so, I appeal to my fellow Americans to choose a candidate who will bring this very divided and highly polarized country together, who will work on the issues before us, whether it is health care or an economy that includes everyone or immigration or confronting climate before it is too late, and doing it in a way that speaks to the best of us, that is ambitious, that is not fearful of the future and does not try to divide us on our differences,’ O’Rourke said. ‘That is exactly what Donald Trump is doing right now.’
During his visit to the hospital, the president was caught an iPhone video bragging about the crowd size during a rally he held in El Paso in February
‘I was here three months ago… That place – packed, right?’ Trump said. ‘And then you had this crazy Beto. Beto had like 400 people in a parking lot’
The rally was held at the border city to drum up support for Trump’s promised wall at the U.S.-Mexico border. O’Rourke held a counter event that brought in a crowd about half the size of the one at Trump’s rally
The 2020 contender skipped out on the Iowa State Fair this week – a critical event in the key caucus state for those competing in the presidential primary – and instead stayed in his home community was it continues to heal from the shooting.
Trump held a rally in El Paso in February that garnered a crowd of 16,000 people, as he tried to drum up support and enthusiasm for his promised border wall to slow illegal immigration, drug smuggling and human trafficking at the southern border.
O’Rourke held a counter event just a few yards away, and only brought in about half the people as Trump’s rally, according to estimates that say there were probably somewhere between 7,000-9,000 people there.
During Trump’s visit to University Medical Center of El Paso, he stopped in the hallway to greet the doctors, nurses and other staff. At one point, someone took a video on their phone that captured Trump bragging about the rally.
‘I was here three months ago. We made a speech … That place – packed, right?’ Trump said to another individual in the video.
‘We had twice the number outside,’ he added. ‘And then you had this crazy Beto. Beto had like 400 people in a parking lot. They said, “His crowd was wonderful.” But we have something.’