Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” 2020 presidential hopeful former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) said President Donald Trump was engaged in a “concerted, organized attack against immigrants, against people of color.”
O’Rourke 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 crime 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’re on a battlefield engaged with the enemy.”
He continued, “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 in Mississippi 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, hog tied for a 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.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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