O’Rourke: Trump stoking nation’s worst pre-election impulses
AUSTIN, Texas — Democratic Texas Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke suggested Tuesday night that President Donald Trump floated the idea of using an executive order to end birthright U.S. citizenship to sway next week’s midterm elections, saying the White House wants to play on the country’s “worst impulses.”
A three-term congressman from El Paso, O’Rourke is challenging Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in a race that was supposed to be a cakewalk for the incumbent but has tightened considerably.
Addressing a loud crowd at the University of Houston during a town hall broadcast for a national audience on MSNBC, O’Rourke was pressed by moderator Chris Matthews about whether Trump is capable of being a calming influence in times of turmoil like past leaders including Robert Kennedy.
“I don’t think he’s capable of it, but that doesn’t have to limit who we are as a people,” said O’Rourke who has campaigned in the past throughout Texas with Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy III, Robert Kennedy’s grandson. “We’re more than the president of the United States, the current occupant of the White House.”