Speaking on MSNBC on Tuesday, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX), never one to miss a chance for hyperbolic vitriol, snapped that the Texas GOP was a “death cult” that seemingly wants African Americans and Latinos to die.
Host Ali Velshi stated, “You have a growing and serious problem in Texas. Your governor’s moved a little bit on some issues having to do with the coronavirus, but this is a strange one, where counties want the ability to enforce stay-at-home orders, and the state government has taken that away from them.”
O’Rourke stated:
That’s right. You know, the United States has been hit hard by COVID. Texas, arguably, harder than almost any other state right now, perhaps with the exception of Florida and Arizona, and then within Texas, the Rio Grande Valley, and particularly Hidalgo County, is just getting the stuffing knocked out of it. They’re running out of beds and space in their hospitals and clinics. They’re running out of nurses and doctors to take care of the patients. It’s so bad that some ambulances are waiting up to ten hours in order to discharge the patients that they picked up because there is no bed there to receive them. There’s no longer space in the morgues, in the funeral homes, so they’re stacking the bodies in refrigerated trucks right there.
O’Rourke then turned to Texas GOP Governor Greg Abbott:
And as you pointed out, our Governor, Greg Abbott, inexplicably, will not only not issue a stay-at-home order for the state of Texas, he will not allow the county judge there, Richard Cortez, to issue one for Hidalgo County to save the lives of the people that he was sworn to serve and to represent. And I want to make sure this is not lost on your viewers, that county is 95% Mexican American.
We know that Latinos and African Americans are disproportionately bearing the burden of COVID transmission that is out of control in the state of Texas. This governor, our governor, Greg Abbott, is choosing to allow people to die when he could choose to allow county judges to save their lives.
Velshi claimed he had spoken to “endless mayors and judges and other county officials” who said they were frustrated with Abbott and wanted to “fix this,” then asked, “Why is Greg Abbott not allowing this?”
O’Rourke then resorted to the kind of demagoguing for which he is famous, hilariously claiming that what Texas really needs is New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, whose policy vis-a-vis the coronavirus and nursing homes has often been credited for the vast swaths of death in his state.
O’Rourke concluded his invective with the “death cult” charge:
This is one of the most craven, callous failures of leadership that I’ve ever witnessed in my life. We don’t have a Governor Cuomo here, which we desperately need. Someone who’s going to be guided by the facts and the science and the truth, and whose sole mission is going to be saving the lives of those that he is elected to serve. Instead, we have a governor who perhaps is looking at the 2022 Republican primary for the office that he now holds, trying to fend off our lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, who on Fox News said there are more important things than living. In other words, let’s get on with the dying, knowing full well that it will be those front-line workers making $7.25 an hour, which is the minimum wage in Texas; it’ll be African Americans, it’ll be Latinos and Mexican Americans who will be doing the dying right here in Texas. This is a death cult, the Texas GOP, only they want you to do the dying, and that’s exactly what is happening in Texas right now.
Video below: