A supporter of Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke confronted Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on a flight and asked him to name a single victim of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, that took place in May. Video of that encounter is going viral on social media.
The video, which was posted on the Twitter account of Beto for Everyone is prefaced with this note:
“Senator Cruz was on my flight, and I asked him to name any of the Uvalde victims. He couldn’t.”
When the video begins, the Beto supporter remarks:
“Hey, we’re in Houston? I thought we were going to Cancun?”
Cruz doesn’t respond, but the man continues, telling the Texas Republican:
“Senator, thank you for everything you’ve done since Uvalde. All those podcast episodes must have raised a lot of money for you.”
Cruz finally speaks, insisting that he tried to pass school security legislation, but Democrats refused to support more security guards or metal detectors in public schools.
To that, the man retorts:
“How did you have time when you were recording a shit ton of podcast episodes?”
When another passenger says the man should let Cruz “fly in peace,” the O’Rourke supporter responds:
“I’m fine,” and Cruz can can fly in peace when “children can be buried in peace.”
Cruz asks the man filming if he knew “the facts at all,” the man responds with a question of his own:
“Do you know any of the names of the Uvalde victims?”
Cruz insists he does indeed know the names of victims from Robb Elementary, but never once utters a single name to back up that claim, telling the man:
“You don’t care about the facts. You’re a partisan — that’s ok.”
As he turns away, the O’Rourke supporter rightly asks:
“You’re not a partisan?”
Senator Cruz was on my flight, and I asked him to name any of the Uvalde victims.
With news that the Uvalde Police Department and the Uvalde Independent School District police force are refusing to cooperate with the Texas Department of Public Safety’s investigation of last Tuesday’s mass shooting at Robb Elementary school that left 21 dead, new questions have arisen, including a suggestion that members of the police force may have accidentally killed one of the 19 children who were slain.
According to sources, the decision to stop cooperating occurred soon after the director of DPS, Col. Steven McCraw, held a news conference Friday during which he said the delayed police entry into the classroom was “the wrong decision” and contrary to protocol.
Reached by ABC News, a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Public Safety said, “The Uvalde Police Department and Uvalde CISD Police have been cooperating with investigators. The chief of the Uvalde CISD Police provided an initial interview but has not responded to a request for a follow-up interview with the Texas Rangers that was made two days ago.”
CNN justice correspondent Shimon Prokupecz spoke with Uvalde schools police chief Peter Arredondo, who said he will not comment any further about the investigation as long as families are grieving.
CNN’s @ShimonPro confronts Uvalde schools police chief Peter Arredondo for the force's decision to not cooperate with investigations into the police response to the Robb Elementary School shooting. pic.twitter.com/4DPocsn8OB
And now we have video in which a child can be heard exclaiming “I got shot!” followed by a police officer remarking:
“They shot a kid.”
Texas law enforcement said days ago that all the kids in Uvalde were shot by Ramos. This sent off red flags; that perhaps the police shot a kid. Now radio communications have surfaced with a kid saying "I got shot", and authorities saying "They shot a kid." What's going on?
There are many unanswered questions eight days after the Uvalde tragedy unfolded, and the only way any answers will ever come to light is if every officer on scene the day of the shooting cooperates fully.
Texas authorities also need to release the bodycam footage from every cop who responded to the shooting, along with any audio or cell phone information that could help the public better understand what may have gone wrong at Robb Elementary.
The families of the children and two teachers who were mercilessly gunned down in Uvalde deserve to know everything that transpired that day. If that means includes indicting any officers or other officials who failed to act or shot errantly, then so be it.
When he went to meet with President Joe Biden, who was in Texas to meet with the relatives of those who lost loved ones in the Uvalde school shooting on Sunday, it quickly became clear that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) is not exactly very popular in his home state at the moment.
Abbott, who has refused to discuss new gun laws in the Lone Star State despite the horrific shooting at Robb Elementary school that left 19 children and two of their teachers dead, was roundly booed and jeered by crowds who had gathered to see President Biden’s arrival.
Abbott is facing an uncertain bid for reelection in November, when he will face Democratic nominee Beto O’Rourke. Texas hasn’t had a Democratic governor since Ann Richards won in 1991.
According to the always mentally unstable Donald Trump Jr., the real reason the United States is experiencing so many mass shootings at schools is because the teachers are “crazy.”
Also, Junior asserted, the Uvalde shooter could just have easily killed 21 people with a “bat.”
“It’s the gun, it’s not the sociopath wielding it, folks. If it wasn’t for the gun, this kid would be a well-adjusted, reasonable individual, he’d be a wonderful human being, right?
“He wouldn’t have done the exact same thing with a bat or a bomb or some sort of improvised device or a machete, he’s a great kid, don’t judge him.”
And then came the attack on teachers, two of whom lost their lives in the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas on Tuesday:
“We can’t acknowledge what the actual causes are, it’s not a drug-addict mother and a missing father and a lack of religion, indoctrination programs in our schools, crazy teachers teaching some of the crap I’ve talking about in these videos. It’s none of those things. It never ends man.
“Our own stupidity, apathy, wokeness, laziness, that’s the problem, folks, and until we fix that, the rest is just talk and crap.”
Junior went on a wild rant about Uvalde tonight, saying the AR-15 isn’t the issue because he could’ve done the “exact same thing” with a bat, bomb or machete. He says gun owners are unfairly “stigmatatized,” and the real problem is that “crazy teachers” are indoctrinating kids. pic.twitter.com/2Rmme3510A
Don Jr. ended his deranged rant by claiming that “no one can admit somebody is actually a piece of garbage and screwed up.”
Does that include you, Junior? Because you certainly qualify as garbage and the look of intoxication in your eyes suggests you’re screwed up beyond repair. And yet we should let a loser with borderline personality disorder like you legally own a gun? Seems like a bad idea.
Teachers are not the problem. Neither are the vast majority of the students. The problem is that it’s easier in this country to buy an AR-15 than it is for a kid to get a driver’s license. Oh, and you have to take a test to earn the right to drive. Isn’t it about time we had the same requirements for owning weapons of mass murder?
CNN host Jim Acosta wasn’t buying the BS being peddled by a National Rifle Association (NRA) board member who tried to offer the worthless notion of thoughts and prayers for children who have been killed in mass shootings such as the one that took place Tuesday at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
Judge Phillip Journey of the 18th Judicial District Court in Kansas serves on the board of the NRA, which held its convention in Houston despite the horror that took place last Tuesday in the Lone Star State. He told Acosta that his court handles family law, and for children that feel terrified, “we all pray for you — lift you up in prayer, that we want to hope that you get through this without the consequences that we see so often in victims of domestic crime.”
That led Acosta to ask:
“Can they bring an AR-15 in your courtroom?”
Judge Journey admitted that guns aren’t allowed in his courtroom, adding that they aren’t allowed in schools, either, which led Acosta to retort:
“Well, people don’t seem to have much trouble if they want to unleash that kind of destruction to do just that. NRA supporters like yourself keep saying that the answer to all of this is good guys with guns. The 19 good guys with guns failed in Uvalde. The cops were there in the school. There was a resource officer that was apparently MIA and none of that helped.”
Journey suggested law enforcement might be to blame in Uvalde, to which Acosta noted:
“With these mass shootings, it keeps coming back to the AR-15 and similar models. Why do people need an AR-15 anyway?”
Journey was silent for a few seconds that seemed to last an eternity, finally responding:
“You know, it’s just a semiautomatic rifle. If you want to be prejudiced about the way it looks. I was aware of what happened in the ’94 semiautomatic firearms ban and there were rifles of similar function that just didn’t look as ugly. They weren’t black guns like a Ruger mini 14 and the Ruger mini 14 was appropriate and the other was not.”
Acosta countered:
“I do want to ask you about the assault weapons ban. How is it an 18-year-old can buy an AR-15 style rifle and have 16 rounds of ammo like we saw with him in Uvalde?”
The judge replied:
“Well, he did not have any prior convictions. He didn’t have any prior issues that would have kept him from purchasing one. It’s my understanding from the news that he purchased it through a firearms dealer, and passed the background check. He didn’t have any prior convictions.”
The host then asked:
“Right, but should an 18-year-old have an AR-15? What’s he going to do with it?”
The judge attempted to use a favorite line for those who think there should be no restrictions whatsoever on the right to own whatever gun a person wants:
“Should an 18-year-old have one in the Army?”
But Acosta was more than ready for that assertion, telling Journey:
“They have military training in the army. The 18-year-old in Uvalde did not. He turned 18 and he went out and bought an AR-15.”
Journey wandered off and began talking about mental health being the real issue, only to have Acosta note that there are mentally ill people all over the world, but only the United States has so many mass shootings, to which the judge weakly countered:
“There have been several other mass shootings all over the world.”
But Acosta shut the judge down cold:
“Not to the level that we have in the United States, come on.”
The NRA and the gun lobby have no answers, only excuses. Sensible gun reform is desperately needed in this country. How many more children have to die in hail of gunfire before something is done?
