aside is that the petulance, the smallness of the president. they said something mean about me, so i get to say what i want. we ve never had a president who sounded like a two-year-old, frankly. we re in week two of what might be called a national tragedy. right? no one died last week from the pipe bombings, but that was a terrorist attack. now people actually did die because of a hate crime. in normal times both of these things separately would be things that leadership, political leadership and the president would be called upon. now, again, it shouldn t be hard to condemn anti semitism. but in your column you write about all the parts of leadership in this country, including media and politicians who need to do something different to change the discourse that we re having. right. listen, you have a competitor on cable news who airs the same conspiracy theories. who invokes the name of a jewish billionaire at the drop of a hat. something that somehow in the
communicating to me, it wasn t just about me. it s about all of us. in trump s america, we ve been led to believe we got to step on our neighbor s shoulder, their face, their backs in order to get ahead. i reject that. we have an opportunity on november 6th as a collective, as a state, to say we deserve better. is that the theme of our campaign? our voices. say our voices. our voices. our voices become our vote. say our votes. our votes. because this is our time. say our time. our time. our voices. our voices. our votes. our votes. our time. our time. let s go get it done. and we at this moment, the country s never been more divided, more polarized, bipartisanship and bitterness and smallness. be the big, bold, confident, strong, courageous, answer to all that. we re going to bring this country together through our leadership here in texas. donna, i don t know how any of the races are going to turn out. to say the democrats don t have a message would be a
welcome back to the mcallen performing arts center and cnn s town hall with beto o rourke. for our viewers just joining us, senator ted cruz declined our town hall invitation. and congressman, i want to ask about the tone in this race here in texas. it changed this week. you ve been saying that people are sick of the pettiness and the smallness in politics, yet during tuesday s debate that you had with senator cruz, you took a page right out of president trump s playbook and you called senator cruz lying ted. why did you do that? yeah. so, there have been untold dollars spent on tv ads that are lies, that are dishonest, trying to scare you about me, trying to incite people based on fear. i went through a whole debate at smu with senator cruz where he made up one story after another, and so at the very outset, when he began with yet another lie, i decided that i could either
town hall invitation. and congressman, i want to ask about the tone in this race here in texas. it changed this week. you ve been saying that people are sick of the pettiness and the smallness in politics, yet during tuesday s debate that you had with senator cruz, you took a page right out of president trump s playbook and you called senator cruz lying ted. why did you do that? yeah. so, there have been untold dollars spent on tv ads that are lies, that are dishonest, trying to scare you about me, trying to incite people based on fear. i went through a whole debate at smu with senator cruz where he made up one story after another, and so at the very outset, when he began with yet another lie, i decided that i could either spend the rest of the debate responding to every single dishonest thing that he said or i could make sure that everyone understood exactly what he s doing. i said, look, he s dishonest. it s one of the reasons that he got tagged with this nickname and that nickname
criticisms, which seem to be working? are you worried those will stick? yeah. reporter: are you fighting back? i think people are stick of the pediness and partisanship and smallness. reporter: can you take the gloves off and fight tougher and dirtier if you have to? we are not fighting against anybody, it s not against another party. with early voting starting next week, o rourke is shedding the nice guy approach. he is going to make up positions and votes i have never held or taken, and he s dishonest, and that s why the president called him lyin ted and why the nickname stuck, because it s true. one of the last democrats to hold an officer in texas, he said he has to sharpen up. you can be high minded while