Former Texas Rep. and 2020 candidate Beto O’Rourke held back nothing as he addressed the crowd at his Thursday campaign rally in Sioux City, Iowa. O’Rourke offered an undeniable truth about the propaganda coming from this White House, illustrating how profoundly Donald Trump’s racism is affecting our country and its citizens.
O’Rourke offered a moving story about a third-grader, who approached him back when he was in Congress and visiting an elementary school to pick up Valentine’s Day cards written by students to military veterans. The child was Mexican-American, and asked O’Rourke why the president doesn’t like her.
And I thought, ‘what is that doing to her head, and her conception of herself, and what’s she’s able to contribute to this country?’
O’Rourke noted that Trump’s incendiary language about immigrants and Muslims “doesn’t make sense” today, but might have been unsurprising to hear from the Third Reich.
This comparison may have been uncomfortable for some at the event, but as O’Rourke later noted to an AP reporter that “silence is complicity,” insisting that "if we don't call out racism … then we're going to continue to get its consequences.”
After the rally, reporters asked O’Rourke to clarify his comments during the rally and he didn’t mince words—emphatically calling out the “president” again for using tactics today that were once employed to dehumanize people in Nazi Germany.
“Calling human beings ‘an infestation’ is something that we might’ve expected to hear in Nazi Germany,” the former Texas congressman said. “Describing immigrants, who have a track record of committing violent crimes at a lower rate than native-born Americans, as ‘rapists and criminals.’ Seeking to ban all Muslims—all people of one religion, what other country on the face of the planet does that kind of thing?”
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“Putting kids in cages. Saying that neo-Nazis and Klansmen and white supremacists are ‘very fine people,’” he added, evoking Trump’s remarks in 2017 that there were “very fine people” in the pro- and anti-white nationalism marches in Charlottesville, Virginia.
You can watch below.
Whomever you support for president, calling out racism is and must remain a facet of our Democratic party in action.
We are the party that represents all human beings. We are the party that speaks with moral clarity, while the other party uses hateful rhetoric. Our party believes in lifting people up, while the other party is tearing people down. We believe the American dream is possible for anyone, and not just the privileged few. We’re the Democratic Party and whomever ends up being our nominee—we all will be very proud to support them.