Beto O’Rourke Says Donald Trump’s Mexico Trade Deal Was ‘Overblown’
Presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke used his appearance on ABC’s This Week on Sunday to criticize President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement deal with Mexico. ABC News reports that he called the deal “overblown,” and also blasted the process used to come to the agreement — the threat of tariffs.
“I think the president has completely overblown what he purports to have achieved. These are agreements that Mexico had already made, in some cases, months ago,” O’Rourke said.
“They might have accelerated the timetable, but by and large, the president achieved nothing except to jeopardize the most important trading relationship that the United States of America has.”
O’Rourke also used his time to touch on recent polls that show him lagging significantly behind Democratic frontrunners Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. In particular, a recent a new Des Moines Register/Mediacom/CNN Iowa Poll shows O’Rourke with just 2 percent support, compared to Biden’s 24 percent and Sanders’ 16 percent.
The former Texas Representative says that — with so much time out from the Iowa caucuses — he’s not sure the polls are an accurate representation of presidential prospects. He added that reliance on polls would have prevented him from serving in Congress, taking on Ted Cruz, and leading the “largest grassroots effort in the history of the state of Texas.”
The damage of Trump's reckless trade policies and tariffs has already been done. What we see is yet another example of him trying to be both the arsonist who created this problem in the first place and the firefighter who wants credit for addressing it. https://t.co/ptxkwMDys4
— Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) June 8, 2019
As The Inquisitr reported, O’Rourke has been struggling to stay relevant in the media. Although he recently outlined some policy proposals that could be game-changing for U.S. politics, a local Democrat’s introduction of the presidential hopeful as a “blank slate” cause some to worry that O’Rourke is still struggling to find an image.
Regardless, the new proposals seem to be carving out a path for O’Rourke. He recently called for term limits for Supreme Court justices and members of Congress, as well as electoral reform laws to increase voter turnout and decrease the influence of corporate money on U.S. politics, as The Inquisitr previously reported.
According to O’Rourke’s campaign, his new policy rollout would increase U.S. voter rolls by 50 million people and boost voter turnout to 65 percent by 2024.
“We’re facing some of the greatest challenges of our lifetimes, and we can’t solve them with half-measures or only half our people—it’s going to take all of us,” he said.
In regards to term limit proposals, the presidential hopeful’s campaign claims that they will provide more opportunity for new leaders. And when it comes to political action committees (PACs), O’Rourke wants their influence curbed by prohibiting them from donating to campaigns.
