Trump rebukes O'Rourke over gun proposal

O'Rourke blames congressional inaction on Trump's 'cowardice'

Jonathan Tilove
jtilove@statesman.com
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke, a former El Paso congressman, speaks with homeless advocates at the Downtown Women's Center in Los Angeles on Tuesday. His gun buyback proposal has drawn sharp reaction from Republicans. [Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times]

Echoing U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, President Donald Trump tweeted Wednesday that Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke of Texas, with his call for mandatory buybacks of assault weapons, was undermining efforts to find common ground on gun safety legislation in the aftermath of recent mass shootings in West Texas and elsewhere.

"Dummy Beto made it much harder to make a deal. Convinced many that Dems just want to take your guns away. Will continue forward!" Trump tweeted.

To be clear: We will buy back every single assault weapon.

We‘ll also license every gun & do a background check on every buyer. That’s what the American people want—and deserve.

The only thing stopping us from ending this epidemic is you & your cowardice. Do the right thing.https://t.co/lPqAv1r9ij

— Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke)September 18, 2019

That brought an immediate response from O'Rourke, who has regained some of the limelight in the presidential race since he was asked at Thursday's Democratic presidential debate in Houston whether he was calling for what critics are describing as gun confiscation, and responded, "Hell yes we are going to take your AR-15, your AK-47."

In answer to Trump's tweet Wednesday, O'Rourke tweeted, "To be clear: We will buy back every single assault weapon. We‘ll also license every gun & do a background check on every buyer. That’s what the American people want — and deserve. The only thing stopping us from ending this epidemic is you & your cowardice. Do the right thing."

O'Rourke has been criticized, including by some Democrats, for taking an unrealistic and provocative position that only makes striking a deal on less extreme reforms less likely. In his tweet, Trump may have been taking a cue from Cornyn, a top Republican involved in negotiations on the issue, who in his weekly conference call with Texas reporters Tuesday, made the same point the president made about O'Rourke, though without calling him a "dummy."

"As you know, Beto O’Rourke has thrown gasoline on this discussion, which I think had been proceeding on a pretty calm, rational and logical path by suggesting that even law-abiding citizens would see their AR-15s, AK-47s confiscated by the federal government," Cornyn said. "Unfortunately, I think he’s set back the debate a lot, maybe not just by years but by decades."

"But we’re going to try not to be distracted by that but to come up with solutions that the president can agree to and where we can get bipartisan majorities in both the House and the Senate," Cornyn said. "That could be as early as the last part of this week or it could go on for a little longer, but we are having very active discussions both with the administration and with the House to try to see what makes sense and what package we can come up with."

Practically speaking, for O'Rourke, being called "Dummy Beto" in a Trump tweet is a good thing and by mid-morning his campaign was fundraising off of it, alerting supporters that "Trump is attacking Beto."

"Donald Trump woke up this morning, picked up his phone, and tweeted at Beto. He blamed us for his own inaction on gun violence," the appeal reads asking for a donation of $3.