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House Democrats were quick to praise Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke for interrupting Gov. Greg Abbott during a press conference Wednesday providing updates on a shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, with one member of Congress comparing him to a man who stood up to communist China.
“Speaking truth to power,” said Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., in a tweet that has since been deleted. Phillips’ tweet included a photo of O’Rourke’s interruption next to the famous photograph of a Chinese man holding shopping bags blocking the path of a communist Chinese tank.
Rep Dean Phillips’ since deleted his tweet.
(Twitter screenshot/Rep. Dean Phillips)
Phillips’ office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
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Another Democrat posted a tweet blaming Abbott and the GOP for the shooting. “[Because] of your lies, hypocrisy, and cowardice parents across your state are keeping their children home out of fear for their safety,” Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-N.J., tweeted at Abbott.
During a press conference on the shooting at Robb Elementary School, O’Rourke derailed Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s discussion of the details of the shooting from the audience.
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“The time to stop the next shooting is now, and you are doing nothing,” O’Rourke said at one point, also adding that the shooting “was totally predictable.”
Patrick responded: “Sir, you are out of line please leave this auditorium.”
Democrat Beto O’Rourke, who is running against Greg Abbott for governor in 2022, interrupts a news conference headed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in Uvalde, Texas Wednesday, May 25, 2022.
(AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)
Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin shouted at O’Rourke as well, calling him a “sick son of a bitch.”
O’Rourke was then escorted out of the auditorium.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., tweeted that he agreed with O’Rourke that Abbott and “every other Republican [are] failing to act.”
O’Rourke is running against Abbott in the Texas gubernatorial election this year.
Many Democrats, including President Biden, hours after the shooting urged restrictive firearm laws and blamed the GOP for contributing to mass shootings due to blocking gun control legislation under the Second Amendment.
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Gun manufacturers have “spent two decades aggressively marketing assault weapons, which make them the most and largest profit,” Biden said in a speech addressing the shooting Wednesday, calling on legislators to act. “For God’s sake, we have to have the courage to stand up to the industry,” he added.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., blamed Republicans for the shooting.
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“There is no such thing as being ‘pro-life’ while supporting laws that let children be shot in their schools, elders in grocery stores, worshippers in their houses of faith, survivors by abusers, or anyone in a crowded place,” she wrote on Twitter Wednesday. “It is an idolatry of violence. And it must end.”