Private citizen and possible 2020 presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke spoke with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes on Thursday about the border, the wall, and O’Rourke’s hometown of El Paso. Hayes passed along a tweeted from Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) and O’Rourke’s answer was probably not what most would have expected.
Hayes introduced the below question to O’Rourke by saying that Crenshaw is a representative in Texas, but not a border district, and that he tweeted it on his timeline, not to Hayes specifically. “I’m passing it along,” he said.
This is the tweet:
.@BetoORourke should answer a simple question tonight with respect to the border debate:
If you could snap your fingers and make El Paso’s border wall disappear, would you?
Because this DHS graph shows that when the wall was built, illegal crossings dropped significantly. pic.twitter.com/JgquXfw2Ee
— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) February 11, 2019
“If you could,” Hayes asked, “would you take the wall down now? Here? Like you have a wall. would you knock it down?”
“Yes,” said O’Rourke. “Absolutely. I’d take the wall down…”
Hayes cut off the rest of that thought, asking, “you think if there was a referendum in the city, that would pass?”
“I do,” said O’Rourke. The “here” was of course El Paso, where both O”Rourke and Trump had rallies this week. The border fence in the town is part of the overall security even according to the Republican Mayor who, along with fact-checkers, contradicted Trump’s claim that the barrier reduced crime in the city.
Hayes said to him that it sounds like he doesn’t think any of the security that has been put in place at the border since 9/11 has been good for the country, and O’Rourke agreed.
“It’s perverse,” said O’Rourke.
Watch the clip above, courtesy of MSNBC.
[Featured image via screengrab]
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