Beto O’Rourke Tells Media To Stop Asking If Trump’s Racist: ‘You Know The President Is Racist’

Former Texas congressman and 2020 Democratic candidate Beto O’Rourke told the media on Monday to stop asking the question that has an obvious answer: Is Donald Trump a racist?

“We know what’s happening right now, the people of this country do,” a fired-up O’Rourke told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes. “You know the president is racist.”

The Texas Democrat said that instead of asking questions to which we already know the answers, it’s time to focus on how the country can tackle the gun violence crisis that continues to rear its ugly head on a daily basis in big cities and small towns all across this country.

Video:

To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.

O’Rourke said:

We’re going to get back on track. We are going to reject this president and his racism, everyone who traffics in it, everyone who has aided him, those members of Congress who have yet to speak out against this president and draw the connections between his language, his rhetoric and the violence that we’re seeing. You mentioned in the opening, hate crimes on the rise every single year for the last three years. The mosque in Victoria, Texas burned to the ground on the same day that Donald Trump signed a ban purporting to ban all Muslim travel to the United States of America. We know what’s happening right now, the people of this country do. It’s time for their elected leaders to say as much, fo members of the press to be very clear. To stop equivocating. Don’t ask if the president’s racist. You know the president’s racist. Don’t ask if he had a role in what happened in El Paso. He absolutely did. Now it’s time for us to act.

O’Rourke has spent the last couple of days expressing outrage not only about the Trump-inspired mass shooting in his home town but also in the media response to it.

The media needs to call a spade a spade

There are certain words the media has trained itself not to use in order to maintain so-called objectivity. At the top of the list are racist and liar.

In the Trump era, however, it is imperative that journalists call a spade a spade: The president is a liar. He has proven time and again that he is a racist.

As we saw in El Paso this weekend, this racism is inspiring other white nationalists to take up arms against a non-existent immigrant “invasion” on the southern border. People are dying as a result.

If we as a country don’t identify and expose this racism for what it is, we’ll never be able to eradicate it.

Follow Sean Colarossi on Facebook and Twitter

Sean Colarossi

Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.