Veronica Escobar: I Won’t Be a ‘Prop’ While Trump ‘Pretends to Care’ About El Paso

Rep. Veronica Escobar, who serves the district which includes El Paso, said Wednesday she turned down a meeting with President Donald Trump on his visit to El Paso because she refuses to be a “prop” while he “pretends to care about the community.”

Escobar had previously said she would only meet with the president if she could talk with him about his rhetoric beforehand, but the White House turned down her request.

Escobar said the president’s words had dehumanized her community. “That is why a terrorist can walk into a shopping center and gun down people in such cold blood. Because he doesn’t see us as the words that the president has used also dehumanized us.”

CNN’s Jake Tapper asked if by not meeting with Trump, Escobar missed a chance to speak with him about his rhetoric. Escobar said she did not believe she would have an opportunity to speak with the president one-on-one as part of the invite she had gotten to join the president’s motorcade.

She said she thought it was “a moment of opportunity for the whole country and for this community, an opportunity to heal.”  “But in order to heal there needs to be an acknowledgment of the words and the power of the words and the hate and the racism in the words… that he’s used to describe my community and of Hispanics and immigrants.”

“If we can’t have that dialogue, my feeling was I refuse to be a prop,” said Escobar. “I’m not going to stand next to him as he pretends to care about what is happening in the community. I hope he truly does care. But these are really difficult and important conversations that need to be had. They can’t be had in moments of passing.”

Watch above, via CNN.