Update: 4:56 pm with Abbott spokesman saying heckler was not affiliated with governor’s campaign.
Beto O’Rourke is defending the F-bomb he dropped Wednesday night while confronting a heckler who he said was laughing during his remarks about the Uvalde mass shooting that killed 19 elementary school students and two teachers.
The incident occurred during a rally in Mineral Wells as O’Rourke began talking about the need to curb mass shootings like the one that happened May 24 at Robb Elementary School. A man in the crowd could be seen and heard laughing as O’Rourke talked about Uvalde, prompting the Democratic nominee for governor to respond with an expletive.
“It may be funny to you, motherf—–, but it’s not funny to me,” O’Rourke said to the heckler.
The moment caused a stir on social media, and the Democrat’s campaign addressed it.
“There’s nothing funny about 19 kids being shot to death in their classrooms, and there’s nothing okay about refusing to act so it doesn’t happen again,” said Chris Evans, O’Rourke’s chief spokesman.
In a tweet after the Mineral Wells rally, O’Rourke defended his stance.
“Nothing more serious to me than getting justice for the families in Uvalde and stopping this from ever happening again,” he tweeted.
Mark Miner, the chief spokesman for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, said Thursday that the Mineral Wells heckler was “not affiliated in any way” with the governor’s reelection campaign.
Though O’Rourke was criticized for using expletives on the campaign trail during his race against Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018, the Mineral Wells crowd applauded wildly after the moment Wednesday night.
It wasn’t the first time he had an exchange with a heckler over Uvalde, either. He addressed someone laughing at an event in Snyder last month when Uvalde came up.
FWIW, yesterday wasn’t first time @BetoORourke addressed someone laughing in the crowd while he talked about gun violence. “Might be funny to you. It isn’t to me,” he said last month in Snyder (16:31): https://t.co/mpUTGZamA9
— Patrick Svitek (@PatrickSvitek) August 11, 2022
O’Rourke, a former El Paso congressman, is running for governor against incumbent Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. The Uvalde massacre has been a flashpoint in the campaign, with high emotions over mass shootings in El Paso and elsewhere in Texas. During a news conference after the shooting, O’Rourke confronted Abbott and was escorted out of the room.
The full video of the town hall in this tweet includes the explicit language that may offend some.