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Beto O’Rourke: ‘This Country Has Been Racist As Long As It’s Been A Country’

Beto O'Rourke

“[Trump] is certainly fanning the flames. He is certainly making violence like this more possible and more real until we change course,” O’Rourke said.

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Former Texas congressman and Democratic presidential candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke told MSNBC’s Jacob Soboroff that he thinks President Donald Trump is a white supremacist and that the United States has always been racist.

“There are very real consequences to [Trump’s] words, to his tweets, to the racism he fans,” O’Rourke said in El Paso, Texas, on Wednesday.

“You saw him in May. He said how are we going to stop these people — meaning these immigrants coming to this country — and someone yells out ‘shoot them.’ The crowd roars with approval; he laughs. He says that’s okay with me. So he’s not the source of racism in this country — this country has been racist as long as it’s been a country — but he is certainly fanning the flames. He is certainly making violence like this more possible and more real until we change course.”

According to FiveThirtyEight, the weighted average of five post-debate polls shows O’Rourke did not gain any traction after the most recent debate, and his numbers slipped by 0.2%. Among his home state Democratic primary voters in Texas, O’Rourke trails Vice President Joe Biden by 9 points, according to a new Dallas Morning News poll this week.