Failed presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke said on Tuesday that the Texas GOP is a “death cult” due to its “failure” to manage the coronavirus pandemic.
.@BetoORourke on Texas coronavirus response: “This is a death cult. The Texas GOP. Only they want you to do the dying.” pic.twitter.com/0qfLp4g836
— All In with Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) July 22, 2020
Texas is one of several states experiencing a recent surge of coronavirus cases.
Naturally, O’Rourke argued that the Lone Star State’s Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who has reintroduced certain restrictions, and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who is enforcing them, are to blame.
“This is one of the most craven, callous failures of leadership that I’ve ever witnessed in my life,” O’Rourke told MSNBC.
Because Abbott will not issue another mandatory shelter-in-place order, he is putting ethnic minorities and front-line workers at risk, O’Rourke said.
“In other words, let’s get on with the dying, knowing full well that it will be those front-line workers making $7.25 an hour, which is the minimum wage in Texas,” O’Rourke said.
“It will be African Americans, it will be Latinos and Mexican Americans who will be doing the dying right here in Texas,” he continued. “… This is a death cult. The Texas GOP. Only they want you to do the dying.”
Contrary to his claim, many Democrat leaders vocally encouraged blacks and other minorities to engage in reckless public gatherings during June protests for racial “justice.”
Some, at the time, speciously claimed that “racism” was a greater health risk than the actual virus.
Ironically, O’Rourke compared Texas’s response to New York’s, claiming that Gov. Andrew Cuomo has navigated the pandemic far more successfully than has Abbott.
The numbers, however, say otherwise.
In Texas, 4,319 people had died from COVID-19 as of Wednesday. In New York, 32,218 people had died.
Moreover, O’Rourke’s word choice was ironic given his personal history and affinity with cults. A report back in March found that O’Rourke was a member of a hacking group called Cult of the Death Cow when he was a teenager.
O’Rourke claimed that there was a “profound value in being able to be apart from the system and look at it critically and have fun while you’re doing it.”
Joining Cult of the Dead Cow allowed him to do just that, he said.
