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Beto Peddles Misleading Charlottesville, ‘Muslim Ban’ Statements On CNN — No One Stops Him

Virginia Kruta Associate Editor
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Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke continued to push misleading statements about President Donald Trump’s “Muslim ban” and comments on the unrest in Charlottesville, Virginia — while CNN’s “State of the Union” host Jake Tapper did not challenge him.

WATCH:

Tapper began the segment by asking O’Rourke about his assessment just a week earlier, in which he labelled the president a “white nationalist,” adding, “I just wonder, sir, President Trump won your home state of Texas by nine points, almost 63 million Americans voted for him, do you think it is racist to vote for President Trump in 2020?”

“I think it is really hard. After everything that we’ve seen from his time as a candidate in 2016, to his repeated warnings of invasions to his repeated calls to send them back,” O’Rourke explained, adding the oft-repeated misleading statements about both Charlottesville and the president’s so-called “Muslim ban.”

“Sending back people who are U.S. citizens, sending back people who were born in this country, his description of white nationalists and klansmen and neo-Nazis as ‘very fine people’ and warning of Muslims being defective or dangerous and attempting to ban — to ban them from entry into this country and his transgender troop ban and his attack on anyone who does not look like or pray like or love like a majority of the country,” O’Rourke claimed.

What the former Texas congressmen left out was the fact that Trump had clarified his statement in the wake of the Charlottesville protests, explaining that he meant only that some of those who were protesting the removal of the confederate statue were “very fine people,” roundly condemning white nationalism and neo-Nazis. Tapper, who notably refuted the claim that Trump had meant the white nationalists when he used the phrase “very fine people,” did not push back.

Tapper also did not push back on O’Rourke’s claim that the president had attempted to ban Muslims from entering the country. The so-called “Muslim ban” — which was ultimately upheld in its third iteration — strictly limited travel from Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen but had no effect whatsoever on the other 45 Muslim-majority nations in the world. (RELATED: Most Voters Support A Ban On Those From 7 Majority Muslim Countries, Survey Finds)

“Donald Trump is dangerous to the future of America and will destroy what makes us so unique and so special and the genius that we represent to ourselves and to the rest of the world and so I appeal to my fellow Americans to choose a candidate who will bring this very divided and highly polarized country together,” O’Rourke concluded.