Beto O’Rourke: Republican Party Is a ‘Cult of Death’ — They ‘Literally Want to Sacrifice’ Lives

Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D) said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” the Republican Party  is a “cult of death.”

Discussing Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) lifting the COVID-19 mask mandate, anchor Nicolle Wallace said, “It sounds like it isn’t going to work on the science side. There’s a lot of skepticism in Texas that it’s not going to work on the economic side as well. Why is he doing it?”

O’Rourke said, “They literally want to sacrifice the lives of our fellow Texans, for I don’t know, for political gain? To satisfy certain powerful interests within the state? This isn’t hyperbole. You heard our lieutenant governor, arguably one of the most powerful positions in the state of Texas, say on Fox News at the beginning of the pandemic, we are willing to died. Old people are willing to sacrifice their lives in order for the economy to reopen. It won’t be just any older Texans who die. We know disproportionately it will be black and brown Texans who do. You heard our former Governor Rick Perry perfectly say we will take blackouts that resulted in the death of an 11-year-old boy who froze to death in his bed in the trailer where he lives, in death of am eighty-four-year-old grandmother who froze to death at her home, of a Vietnam veteran who froze to death in his truck, more than a hundred deaths at least so far that we know of due to this, Perry says we’ll take that rather than federal oversight and regulation. Now, this mission accomplished deal from Abbott yesterday, saying we are done trying to fight COVID, even though, as you say, Biden has told us every adult in America can be vaccinated by the end of May.”

He added, “You know. I think too many of us it appeared to be a cult of personality, the Republican Party in the era of Trump, and it probably still holds true. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that it’s also a cult of death. You have extraordinarily anti-democratic elements. I mean, look at the insurrection of January 6 for any proof. You have anti-government elements literally running the government of the state of Texas. I use the phrase failed state because I think when you can’t guarantee the electricity, the heat, the running water, the public welfare, and safety, you are about there by any classic definition. You have folks literally upending civilization as we know it, and completely indifferent to the suffering it caused—44,000 deaths alone just in the state of Texas. In El Paso, there are 280 bodies stacked up in a warehouse because there are not enough gravediggers to dig new graves to be dug, to put them in the ground. They had to call in the National Guard to move the bodies. They had to set up ten mobile morgues. That’s in my city right now, which is eighty- five percent Mexican American. They just don’t care. That indifference is killing people in my community and throughout the state of Texas.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN