When it comes down to mass shootings, I always experience stacking amounts of anger. The first is that a fellow human being would inflict such harm and suffering on people as they do. I get angry that someone with a soul could have no empathy and shoot an innocent person or a child in cold blood, ending their lives and putting their families through a grief I hope I never have to experience firsthand.

Then I get a second bout of anger, because the moment a mass shooting happens, the political opportunists come out of the woodwork. They see the death of innocents, and without missing a beat, turn to harness the power of peoples’ emotions to push an agenda or create a narrative.

Failed Texas Senate candidate and current 2020 Democrat presidential candidate Robert “Beto” O’Rourke did that very thing during interviews after the shooting occurred in his home town of El Paso, Texas.

After commenting first on the tragic shooting, O’Rourke launched into a tirade about the racism of the shooter and how it all just happens to be the fault of his potential — but not likely — opponent in the general elections.

“[Trump] is a racist and he stokes racism in this country,” he said. “And it does not just offend our sensibilities, it fundamentally changes the character of this country and it leads to violence.”

#BREAKING I just asked @BetoORourke if @realDonaldTrump is at all responsible for today’s mass shooting in #ElPaso He said yes and added that in his opinion, the President is indeed a racist. @abc7breaking @ABC pic.twitter.com/wA3iB3uLFN

— Michael Gordon KVIA ABC-7 (@MichaelGordonTV) August 4, 2019

O’Rourke’s tour-de-approval didn’t stop there. Utilizing the fact that he’d be the one put in front of cameras, given it’s his town, O’Rourke continued to use the shooting as an anti-Trump platform on major news networks. CNN’s Jake Tapper asked for a response from O’Rourke about the shooter holding these belief’s before Trump’s time, which was met by a long, awkward silence before he proceeded to blame Trump anyway:

Let’s not mince words right now. This president is encouraging greater racism, and not just the racist rhetoric, but the violence that so often follows. This shooter in the manifesto cites, in part, for his inspiration the shooter in Christchurch, New Zealand, who cites Donald Trump as his inspiration. This anti-immigrant rhetoric – and again, it is not just President Trump, but he’s certainly, as the person in the position of greatest public trust [in] power, most responsible for it. This is Fox News; this is what we’re seeing on the internet; this is the the toleration of intolerance and hatred and racism in this country; this is what is causing what we are seeing here today, and it will continue to happen unless we call it out and unless we change it.

https://twitter.com/mollyfprince/status/1158053884763549697

The fact is, O’Rourke isn’t doing well in the polls. He dropped from 3rd behind Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders when the 2020 campaigns first started spooling up to near last place fairly early.

O’Rourke is desperate for recognition, not just from voters, but from the radical parts of the Democratic party from whom he’s been desperately attempting to win approval for some time. In doing so, he’s going to take Trump out of context about racist quotes he never made and attribute the white supremacy seen from the El Paso shooter to Trump’s supposed support of it.

This is absolutely disgusting. O’Rourke mentions Trump calling immigrants “animals,” but this was a clear reference to the gang MS-13 and its efforts to run a crime syndicate in America. In fact, MS-13 was the whole point of Trump’s speech, yet the media utilized it to make it sound like Trump was talking about all immigrants and Democrats like O’Rourke just go with it because it’s politically expedient.

So we have O’Rourke using an atrocity where innocent people were murdered in cold blood, including children, to slam Trump and make himself look good.

By the way, he hasn’t addressed the fact that the Dayton shooter was a hard-left socialist who loved Elizabeth Warren and Antifa. For some reason, he hasn’t spoken up about that. I wonder why?

Up till now, I always thought O’Rourke was just an awkward afterthought in the 2020 Democratic race, but now I full-on think he’s a disgusting huckster with no shame.