Just hours after Donald Trump played the cruelest card of the 2018 midterm election season -- announcing that he would try to use an executive order to overturn the constitutional guarantee that people born in the United States are US citizens -- Beto O'Rourke called the president out for again injecting bigotry into American politics.

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From The Nation

Rebuking the president's midterm rhetoric, the Texan says, "It's un-American. It's not who we are."

Just hours after Donald Trump played the cruelest card of the 2018 midterm election season -- announcing that he would try to use an executive order to overturn the constitutional guarantee that people born in the United States are US citizens -- Beto O'Rourke called the president out for again injecting bigotry into American politics. Appearing before a cheering crowd at the Richard M. Borchard Regional Fairgrounds in Robstown, a largely Latino community of 12,000 in Southeast Texas, O'Rourke was righteous in his rejection of Trumpism.

"This idea that we can scare each other about each other -- based on where we are from, what language we spoke before we came to this country, the color of our skin, the nationality we claimed before we claimed that we were Americans -- is preposterous," declared O'Rourke. "It's un-American. It's not who we are."

As he raced across the sprawling Lone Star state, which has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1988, O'Rourke countered the president's, as well as his opponent Ted Cruz's, explicit embrace of nationalism with a passionate rejection of the politics of divide and conquer.

O'Rourke is not the only candidate making his differences with Trump clear in the final hours before the election that will decide control of the US House of Representatives, the US Senate, and most statehouses. But the Texas Democrat may well be the candidate who is making the biggest and boldest gamble on the better angels of American politics. And it seems to be working. While his remains a long-shot bid, the final polls have shown O'Rourke closing the gap -- pulling to within four points of the incumbent early last week, to within three points later last week and, in a survey released Saturday, at a 49-49 tie.

O'Rourke still has hurdles to overcome in a state where Democrats have been on a losing streak since the mid-1990s. He may not make it over them. But the 46-year-old congressman from El Paso is not slowing down. And he is not closing cautiously. The candidate who has called out racism, xenophobia, and incivility throughout the campaign is finishing off as the antidote to Trump.

"I didn't hear this come up when the Irish were coming into this country, when other people from other parts of the planet were [coming] here," he said the other day in Robstown. "As you see continuing immigration from Latin America -- generations of Mexican Americans who have made this one of the greatest countries in the world, one of the greatest states within it -- when you look at immigrants from Central America, this is who the president is talking about. He's called Mexican American immigrants 'rapists' and 'criminals.' He's called those seeking asylum from Central America 'animals' and 'an infestation.' And now he questioning the constitutional right to [birthright citizenship] for those who are coming from these countries. Let's call it out for what it is. We can either focus on the president's hate and his bigotry and his nativism, or we can stay focused on the future."

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Authors Bio:

John Nichols, a pioneering political blogger, has written the Online Beat since 1999. His posts have been circulated internationally, quoted in numerous books and mentioned in debates on the floor of Congress.


Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and dozens of other newspapers.


Nichols is a frequent guest on radio and television programs as a commentator on politics and media issues. He was featured in Robert Greenwald's documentary, "Outfoxed," and in the documentaries Joan Sekler's "Unprecedented," Matt Kohn's "Call It Democracy" and Robert Pappas' "Orwell Rolls in his Grave." The keynote speaker at the 2004 Congress of the International Federation of Journalists in Athens, Nichols has been a featured presenter at conventions, conferences and public forums on media issues sponsored by the Federal Communications Commission, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Consumers International, the Future of Music Coalition, the AFL-CIO, the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, the Newspaper Guild [CWA] and dozens of other organizations.


Nichols is the author of the upcoming book The Genius of Impeachment (The New Press), as well as a critically-acclaimed analysis of the Florida recount fight of 2000, Jews for Buchanan (The New Press) and a best-selling biography of Vice President Dick Cheney, Dick: The Man Who is President (The New Press), which has recently been published in French and Arabic. He edited Against the Beast: A Documentary History of American Opposition to Empire (Nation Books), of which historian Howard Zinn said: "At exactly the time when we need it most, John Nichols gives us a special gift--a collection of writings, speeches, poems, and songs from throughout American history--that reminds us that our revulsion to war and empire has a long and noble tradition in this country."


With Robert W. McChesney, Nichols has co-authored the books, It's the Media, Stupid! (Seven Stories), Our Media, Not Theirs (Seven Stories) and Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy (The New Press). McChesney and Nichols are the co-founders of Free Press, the nation's media-reform network, which organized the 2003 and 2005 National Conferences on Media Reform.


Of Nichols, author Gore Vidal says: "Of all the giant slayers now afoot in the great American desert, John Nichols's sword is the sharpest."