In a speech in El Paso on Thursday, low-polling White House contender Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke stated that racism in America “is as old as America itself,” and that the source of our racial divide “is Donald Trump.”
“To those places, where Donald Trump has been terrorizing and terrifying and demeaning our fellow Americans, that’s where you will find me,” he said, attempting a campaign reboot.
“We have a racism in America that is as old as America itself,” he continued, apparently unaware that racism is a universal human failing, not a solely American one, and ignoring that America’s history has in large part been the story of overcoming racism.
O’Rourke went on to assert that America’s current racial tension is the fault of one man only: “We must take the fight directly to the source of this problem, that person who has caused this pain, and placed this country in this moment of peril and that is Donald Trump.” It remains unclear how a candidate from the party of inherently racist identity politics could heal America’s racial divide.