Robert “Beto” O’Rourke, the latest high-profile Democrat to announce a 2020 presidential bid, has confronted his white male privilege.
It took O’Rourke a full two days to apologize for his gender and skin color after announcing his candidacy, which is perhaps some sort of record.
O’Rourke was in apology-mode during a “Political Party LIVE!” podcast appearance after cracking a harmless joke about his wife doing most of the work raising their children. O’Rourke said that his wife Amy is raising their three kids “sometimes with my help.”
Of course, the quip was not viewed by the Left as harmless, nor an acknowledgment of his wife’s hard work (which it is). Instead, it was viewed as evidence of sexism in politics.
Responding to the joke, O’Rourke vowed to be “more thoughtful” about his male and white privilege.
“Not only will I not say that again, but I’ll be more thoughtful going forward in the way that I talk about our marriage,” the failed Senate candidate said on the podcast, according to The Hill.
O’Rourke will also be more thoughtful in “the way in which I acknowledge the truth of the criticism that I have enjoyed white privilege,” the 2020 hopeful added.
“My ham-handed attempt to try to highlight the fact that Amy has the lion’s share of the burden in our family — that she actually works but is the primary parent in our family, especially when I served in Congress, especially when I was on the campaign trail — should have also been a moment for me to acknowledge that that is far too often the case, not just in politics, but just in life in general,” offered O’Rourke. “I hope as I have been in some instances part of the problem, I can also be part of the solution,” he added regarding criticism that female candidates could not make similar jokes about their families.
The media-beloved Democrat also hit a couple announcement bumps on Friday, when a report from Reuters exposed O’Rourke as a member of the hacker group “Cult of the Dead Cow” as a teen. The pseudonym O’Rourke used with the group was “psychedelic warlord.”
“The hugely influential Cult of the Dead Cow … is notorious for releasing tools that allowed ordinary people to hack computers running Microsoft’s Windows. It’s also known for inventing the word ‘hacktivism’ to describe human-rights-driven security work,” said the Reuters report. “Members of the group have protected O’Rourke’s secret for decades, reluctant to compromise his political viability. Now, in a series of interviews, CDC members have acknowledged O’Rourke as one of their own. In all, more than a dozen members of the group agreed to be named for the first time in a book about the hacking group by this reporter that is scheduled to be published in June by Public Affairs.”
O’Rourke also penned fictional pieces, one which describes the murder of children, from his time with Cult of the Dead Cow. He apologized Friday in the wake of the report, The Hill wrote, saying he was “mortified to read it now, incredibly embarrassed … whatever my intention was as a teenager doesn’t matter.”
“I have to look long and hard at my actions, at the language I have used, and I have to constantly try to do better,” he added.