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Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke spoke at SXSW (South by Southwest) on Saturday, a music festival and media event in Austin, Texas.
O’Rourke is facing current Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott in a bid for governor, who he slammed as a “thug” in his SXSW discussion.
“He’s a thug, he’s an authoritarian,” O’Rourke said of Abbott on Saturday.
“We’ve gotta get past this guy, this extremism, these fringe politics that are so deeply hurting people in the state of Texas,” O’Rourke said of Abbott.
TEXAS PRIMARY RACES TO WATCH: BIG NAMES VIE FOR GOVERNOR, ATTORNEY GENERAL
In this Sept. 7, 2019 file photo, Democratic presidential candidate former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas, speaks during the New Hampshire state Democratic Party convention, in Manchester, NH. He exited the presidential race on Friday after raising approximately $17 million for his campaign.
(Associated Press)
O’Rourke also accused Abbott of having a “crazed fixation” on transgender children, saying that the governor was failing to bolster resources and protections for sex-trafficked children.
“Those same kids who were rescued from sex traffickers, are now being trafficked for sex by their guardians in the state of Texas,” O’Rourke claimed. “The governor knew there was a problem for four months, and he did not do sh–.”
O’Rourke, a former Democratic candidate in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, is running for governor of Texas and sailed through his party’s primary at the start of the month.
The gubernatorial candidate also took Abbott to task at SXSW for the state’s unpreparedness for the winter power outages that swept across the state last year.
“The lights went out, and the heat failed. And the water stopped flowing because the pipes froze as well. And people lost their lives as a consequence,” O’Rourke said, going on to accuse Abbott of being in bed with gas companies unwilling to invest in weather-proofing…
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