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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump greets fellow candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, at a rally organized by Tea Party Patriots on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2015, to oppose the Iran nuclear agreement.
President Donald Trump tried to stoke fears of socialism Friday as he bashed Rep. Beto O’Rourke, the Democrat pushing to upset Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in red Texas.
Ahead of his Monday visit to Houston, Trump called the 46-year-old representative a “total lightweight compared to Ted Cruz” who “comes nowhere near representing the values and desires” of Texans. He suggested O’Rourke wants to “turn Texas into Venezuela” — deploying rhetoric he has used in an attempt to portray Democrats as dangerous leftists as the GOP tries to defend its congressional majorities on Nov. 6.
Trump tweet
The tweet comes as O’Rourke has forced Republicans to work harder than they typically do in statewide Texas races. The Democrat, who has harnessed his party’s energy and smashed Senate fundraising records with a $38 million haul in the third quarter, would shake up the battle for control of the Senate if he shocked Cruz next month.
O’Rourke’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
O’Rourke has gone no further left than a typical American Democrat. He has advocated for policies such as Medicaid expansion, tighter background checks for gun sales and a path to citizenship for young immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children. But the GOP has repeatedly cast him as too liberal for the state, which Trump carried by about 9 percentage points in 2016. Democrats have not won a statewide race there in more than 20 years.
