PIERS MORGAN: Beto O'Rourke is a deluded loser running on a ticket of lies, hypocrisy and the vote-destroying message that all Americans are about to die

Beto O’Rourke is a loser.

In 2016, he ran against Ted Cruz in the Texas Senate race, and lost.

He didn’t lose by much, just 2.6% of the vote in fact.

But he still lost, and in the brutal world of US politics that usually means the last anyone hears from you for the rest of your natural life.

(One of the few exceptions to this rule is Hillary Clinton, who was a double loser – first to Barack Obama in the Democrat nominee race in 2008, then to Donald Trump in the 2016 general election.)

But today, Beto O’Rourke announced he is running for President.

Loser Beto O’Rourke announced he is running for President today in an unconventional fashion – by announcing the end of the world is fast upon us

And he did so in rather unconventional fashion – by announcing the end of the world is fast upon us.

As US presidential campaign messages go, it at least had the benefit of being uniquely depressing.

O’Rourke didn’t quite scream ‘WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!’ but he might as well have done.

In direct contrast to Donald Trump’s upbeat winning 2016 slogan of ‘Make America Great Again’, O’Rourke thinks he can win in 2020 by telling 320 million Americans they’re all doomed.

‘We face catastrophe and crisis on this planet,’ he declared, asserting that climate change will unleash ‘massive migration of tens or hundreds of millions of people from countries that are literally uninhabitable or under water.’

He’s not even promising to stop it.

‘Life is going to be a lot tougher for the generations that follow us,’ he said, ‘no matter what we do.’

Right.

Well that should galvanise everyone into a frenzy of optimism and excitement!

There’s also the small matter of Mr O’Rourke’s staggering hypocrisy on the very issue of climate change.

For his Texas election campaign, he signed up to a No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge that declared he wouldn’t line his pockets with big cash donations from the oil, gas and coal barons.

Then it later emerged he’d accepted $476,325 in such donations.

Indeed, O’Rourke took so much that his name was humiliatingly removed from the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge.

So he not only broke a major campaign promise, but he also exposed himself as someone who preaches about saving the planet but greases his political palms with money from stuff that destroys the planet.

That’s not the only inconsistency that might bedevil O’Rourke now he’s hit the national political stage.

Two weeks ago he said the entire existing southern border security fencing – all 700 miles of it - should be removed because the dangers from refugees, asylum seekers and illegal immigrants were being massively exaggerated.

Yet today, as he announced his intention to run for President, O’Rourke gravely warned of millions of people fleeing to countries like America from places ravaged by climate change.

You don’t have to be a Trump ‘Wall’ fan to realise there is a slight contradiction here: if America’s border is about to face such apocalyptic pressure, why on earth would you propose removing all security along it?

In many ways, O’Rourke is the white version of Barack Obama: he’s eloquent, intelligent, well-read, tall (6ft 4), handsome, exudes youthful energy, isn’t afraid to show his emotions, has a beaming smile, and used to be a bit of a naughty boy (he was in a punk band and has a DWI arrest on his record).

Beto, also like Obama, says all the right ‘woke’ things on social media that make him a Twitter hero – whether it’s calling for cannabis to be legalised or defending Colin Kaepernick over his NFL kneeling protest.

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In many ways, O’Rourke is the white version of Barack Obama. They're both eloquent, well-read, tall, youthful, have a beaming smile, and both woke. But America has already had the real thing

But ‘being like Obama’ is not necessarily a winning proposition.

America’s already had the real Obama as President for eight years and its response was to vote in the least qualified presidential candidate in the history of the US, a man who in every way was the complete antithesis of his predecessor.

There’s also a large whiff of ‘fraud’ about this new ‘Man of the People’.

He calls himself Beto, to appeal to the Hispanic community, but his actual name is Robert.

He sells himself as just a regular guy, yet he’s actually stinking rich – thanks mainly to his wife who is the daughter of a real estate tycoon worth $500 million.

And while he professes to be an ‘outsider’, on the very day O’Rourke announced his candidacy, the new issue of Vanity Fair, the world’s most elite celebrity magazine, came out with a glowing cover story on him boasting the supremely immodest headline about his decision to run: ‘Man, I’m just born to be in it…’

He puts the Vanity in Vanity Fair with this cover,  boasting the supremely immodest headline about his decision to run: ‘Man, I’m just born to be in it…’

He certainly puts the vanity into Vanity Fair!

Of course, having flair, charisma and good looks are not bad things for a presidential candidate.

But they have to be backed up by substance, and that is where O’Rourke looks most dubious.

He talks a good game but rarely specifies how he would actually walk it, prompting justified criticism that he’s big on rhetoric, small on substance.

As a Washington Post journalist who spent time with him on the Texas campaign trail observed: ‘When it comes to many of the biggest policy issues facing the country, O’Rourke’s default stance is to call for a debate.’

For example, he says he believes in ‘universal, high-quality, guaranteed health care for all’, but hasn’t endorsed the Bernie Sanders Medicare-for-All proposal and has yet to explain what his alternative plan would be, or how the hell he would pay for it.

On green energy, he says he’s ‘supportive of the concept’ of the controversial trillion-dollar Green New Deal but doesn’t fully endorse it and again hasn’t explained what HE would do instead.

It seems he’s neither progressive nor moderate, nor prepared to really say what he really stands for - which is not a place for any Democratic candidate to find themselves in if they want to secure the Party’s nomination.

This is a guy so egocentric and vague on detail that his website has more space devoted to his personal merchandise than his policy ideas…

He’s neither progressive nor moderate and won't really say what he really stands for on anything. He's so egocentric his website has more space for Beto merchandise than policies

O’Rourke is also woefully inexperienced. 

As GQ reminds us today, before Trump stunned the world in 2016, you’d have to go back over 70 years to find a candidate who’s won the White House with less senior political experience (governor, congressman, senator) than Beto. And that man was Dwight Eisenhower, who was Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in World War II, which you might think slightly eclipses Beto’s seven years on the El Paso City Council and six years on Texas’s 16th congressional district in Washington.

If Trump loses in 2020, and I think that remains a very big ‘if’ as things stand, then it will surely be to a candidate with considerably MORE political experience than him, not another political minnow?

But the biggest problem with Beto is that he’s a proven loser.

And if there’s one thing President Trump will want more than anything else lining up against him in 2020, it’s another proven loser.

Particularly a loser whose sales pitch is whimsical economic ideas that would bankrupt America, whose answer to illegal immigration is to open up the border and let everyone in, and whose cheery message to voters is that they’re all about to die.