AND THIS GUY COULD ACTUALLY END UP AS THE DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT

Beto O'Rourke says he would 'absolutely' tear down Trump's wall, along with 600 miles of existing barriers at the US-Mexico border

By Megan Sheets

Daily Mail
February 15, 2019

Beto O'Rourke said that he would take down existing walls and fences along the US-Mexico border if given the opportunity.

The former congressman from El Paso made the declaration in an MSNBC interview Thursday after the House and Senate passed a spending bill allocating $1.4billion for President Donald Trump's proposed border wall.

The White House said Thursday that Trump intends to sign the spending measure but will declare a national emergency 'to ensure we stop the national security and humanitarian crisis at the border'.

After the bill was passed by both chambers, Texas Rep Dan Crenshaw asked O'Rourke on Twitter: 'If you could snap your fingers and make El Paso's border wall disappear, would you?'

O'Rourke responded: 'Absolutely, I'd take the wall down.'

O'Rourke went on to explain that barriers along the border have not improved American security, saying: 'Here’s what we know: after the Secure Fence Act, we have built 600 miles of wall and fencing on a 2,000 mile border. What that has done is not in any demonstrable way made us safer.'

'It's cost us tens of billions of dollars to build and maintain. And it's pushed migrants and asylum seekers and refugees to the most inhospitable, the most hostile stretches of the US-Mexico border, ensuring their suffering and death.

'More than 4,000 human beings, little kids, women and children, have died. They're not in cages, they're not locked up, they're not separated -- they're dead, over the last 10 years.

'We have walled off their opportunity to legally petition for asylum, to cross in urban centers like El Paso, to be with family, to work jobs, to do what any human being should have a right to be able to do, what we would do if faced with the same circumstances they were.'

The 600 miles of fencing currently in place at the border was erected under the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which was supported by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other Democrats, including then-Sens Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

O'Rourke had made similar remarks during a rally in El Paso earlier this week, which he held less than a mile away from a rally where President Trump sought to bolster public support for his proposed border wall.

'Walls do not save lives. Walls end lives,' the possible presidential candidate told his cheering crowd that rallied a mere two hundreds yards away from Trump's gathering.

'We are making a stance for the truth, against lies, against hate, against ignorance, against intolerance,' he said as supporters yelled 'Beto, Beto, Beto.'

As O'Rourke spoke, behind him, in the distance, Trump filled a giant big screen set up outside his event for the overflow crowd and the president addressed his supporters from a stage flanked by two huge signs reading 'Finish the wall.'

EDITOR’S NOTE: Don’t sell O'Rourke short. He’s an outstanding campaigner and his good looks will attract a lot of women voters. He lost to Ted Cruz by a whisker in an election Cruz should have won by a country mile.