Beto O’Rourke, erstwhile candidate for U.S. Senate and current candidate for Texas governor, interrupted Texas governor Greg Abbott’s press conference on yesterday’s school shooting in Uvalde. Brittany Bernstein reports:
Democrat Beto O’Rourke, who is running for governor in Texas, interrupted Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s press conference on the Uvalde school shooting on Wednesday, shouting, “This is on you!”
“The time to stop the next shooting is right now and you are doing nothing,” O’Rourke said as he approached the stage where Abbott and other state officials were seated.
As Charlie Cooke notes, O’Rourke’s actual accusation against Abbott — “this is on you” — is incomprehensibly vague, just as a simple question of public policy. O’Rourke didn’t care to specify which of Abbott’s policies, exactly, were responsible for the tragedy. He just intoned, repeatedly: “You are doing nothing. You are offering up nothing.”
But on a more basic human level, it’s also just gross. O’Rourke was weaponizing an unspeakable tragedy for a cheap campaign PR move, a pre-planned publicity stunt meant to turn the attention to him. Gun-control advocates would likely retort that the issue is political, and that it’s necessary to point out the public-policy failures that caused the shooting in the first place. But that’s not what O’Rourke was saying — his accusation was that Abbott, by “doing nothing,” was directly responsible for the children’s deaths. That he didn’t care about dead kids. A grotesque remark to make at any juncture but particularly when the blood has barely even dried.
After police escorted O’Rourke out, Abbott said: “There are family members who are crying as we speak. Think about the people who are hurt and help those who are hurt.” O’Rourke probably didn’t hear him. And even if he did, he obviously wasn’t listening.