Former state Rep. Vernon Jones, a conservative Democrat-turned-Republican running for Congress in Georgia, slammed Beto O’Rourke — who is running against Greg Abbott for governor in 2022 — after the failed presidential candidate crashed a press conference covering the mass shooting in Uvalde, saying O’Rourke should be “disgusted with himself,” and called for more God — not gun control — in Americans’ lives.
In a video posted to Twitter on Wednesday, Jones expressed his views on the Texas gubernatorial hopeful’s recent stunt.
“I’ve just got to say something about what I observed today with Beto O’Rourke and his conduct at a press conference,” the clip, which garnered over 42,000 views as of Thursday morning, begins.
.@BetoORourke should be disgusted with himself.
Using the warm bodies of dead children to advance his political career isn’t just DISGUSTING; it’s EVIL.
America needs GOD, not gun control. pic.twitter.com/RU9a2ifc97
— Vernon Jones For Congress (@VernonForGA) May 26, 2022
Jones then calls out O’Rourke, saying he should be appalled by his very own actions.
“Beto O’Rourke should be ashamed of himself. Beto O’Rourke should be embarrassed of himself. Beto O’Rourke should be disgusted with himself,” he says.
Jones, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump in his run for Congress, said he was “disgusted by O’Rourke’s behavior and his attempts to use still-warm bodies of children for his political purposes to advance his political career.”
He also clarified that the real issue is not gun control but a lack of God in people’s lives that has brought about America’s current state.
“Look, guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Sick people kill people. Evil people kill people,” he says. “We don’t need gun control. What we need is more God control. That’s what we need.”
“We don’t have a gun problem in America,” he added. “I just wish we’d have more God in our lives because what is happening is absolutely astonishing and just beyond belief.”
O’Rourke, a former Democrat congressman who represented El Paso, Texas, with a long history of contradicting positions on the Second Amendment and gun control, took the opportunity to inject himself during Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R) Wednesday press conference covering the Robb Elementary mass shooting in Uvalde, before being ejected from the room.
Jones, who switched parties in 2020 and endorsed then-President Trump’s re-election campaign, is currently heading to a runoff with fellow Republican candidate Mike Collins, a trucking business executive.
Collins finished ahead of Jones in voting but failed to eclipse 50 percent of the vote, resulting in the runoff.
In 2020, he explained why “a lifelong Democrat [was] speaking at the Republican National Convention (RNC).”
“[Because] the Democratic Party does not want black people to leave their mental plantation; we’ve been forced to be there for decades and generations,” he said.
“But I have news for Joe Biden: We are free people with free minds,” Jones added. “I am part of a large and growing segment of the black community who are independent thinkers, and we believe that Donald Trump is the president that America needs to lead us forward.”
Earlier this month, Jones called the Democratic Party “the most extreme organization in the world,” recalling the party’s support for slavery and the Ku Klux Klan, as well as its current attacks on law enforcement and “independent think[ing].”
Follow Joshua Klein on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.
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