Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, who has called President Donald Trump racist before, is now flat-out calling him a white supremacist.
“He is,” O’Rourke said when asked by MSNBC‘s Jacob Soboroff on Wednesday if Trump was a “white supremacist.”
“He’s also made that very clear,” O’Rourke continued. “He’s dehumanized or sought to dehumanize those who do not look like or pray like the majority here in this country.”
O’Rourke hasn’t been mincing any words since the horrific shooting in El Paso, Texas, where his former congressional district is based.
The presidential hopeful went on to point out more examples of Trump’s insidious racism, including welcoming more immigrants from Nordic countries, while calling majority-Black or African countries “shitholes.”
As ESSENCE previously reported, First Lady Melania Trump née Melanija Knavs, later changed to Melania Knauss, first came to the U.S. from Slovenia in 1996, first using a tourist visa, then a string of working visas until becoming a U.S. citizen in 2006.
“He has been very clear about who he prefers to be in this country and who he literally wants to keep out with walls and cages and militarization and torture and cruelty,” O’Rourke added.
O’Rourke also bluntly stated that with Donald Trump in office, another tragedy, fueled by white supremacy and hatred, is also bound to happen again.
“It will happen again because what happened in El Paso is not an isolated incident,” he said. “After the president warned of caravans [of immigrants] you had someone go into the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh warning of caravans.”
“You had the mosque in Victoria, Texas, burned to the ground on the day that Trump signed his executive order seeking to ban Muslim travel to the United States,” he added, pointing to other examples of racial, cultural and religious aggression. “So there are very real consequences to his words, to his tweets, to the racism.”
O’Rourke also pointed out another example, where during a rally in Florida, when Trump asked how to “stop these people” from crossing the border, someone in the crowd yelled, “shoot them!”
The crowd laughs, Trump tittering along with them, ESSENCE previously reported.
“That’s only in the panhandle you can get away with that stuff. Only in the panhandle,” the president quipped to more raucous laughter and applause.
“Trump is not the source of racism in this country,” O’Rourke added. “This country has been racist as long as it’s been a country, but he’s certainly fanning the flames. He’s certainly making violence like this more possible and more real.”