Mario Carrillo: “Cornyn is all hat, no cattle”
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In a new Washington Post column, Jennifer Rubin calls Texas Senator John Cornyn complicit in President Trump’s role in inciting hatred against immigrants and Latinos. Trump has continually used language, such as “invasion” to refer to asylum seekers reaching our southern border, which is language found in the El Paso shooter’s manifesto.
Mario Carrillo, Texas State Director for America’s Voice issued the following statement,
“It comes as no surprise to Texans that Sen. Cornyn refuses to stand up to the President and represent the best interests of his constituents. Sen. Cornyn is all hat, no cattle and has enabled President Trump’s rhetoric from the beginning. As other Republican elected officials in Texas and across the country have at the very least called the shooter’s attack against El Paso an act of White supremacy, Cornyn refuses to even do that and acknowledge what we know to be the root of this massacre. Instead of offering solutions, Cornyn refuses to condemn the President’s rhetoric, which is featured in the shooter’s manifesto, and says that there are issues that simply cannot solve.
“In this moment of crisis, Cornyn is useless to Texas, he won’t stand up to the President, won’t condemn hate speech, won’t pass laws that try to make weapons of war harder to obtain and would keep Americans safer. It’s heartbreaking. El Paso is still reeling, and our own hometown’s Senator is sitting idly by, doing absolutely nothing about it. Texas needs leaders, and John Cornyn has failed us, he’s proven time and time again that he’ll put politics over Texans and is simply not up to lead.”
Below is an excerpt from the Washington Post column from Rubin; find the story in its entirety here.
The Texas Tribune reports on state Republicans’ willingness — or lack thereof — to explain the connection between the slaughter of 22 people in El Paso and the white nationalism spouted by the suspected murderer. Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush, whose father Jeb was governor of Florida and whose mother is a Mexican immigrant, got the ball rolling. He said the response “should include standing firm against white terrorism here in the US.” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) also chimed in. “’As the son of a Cuban immigrant, I am deeply horrified by the hateful anti-Hispanic bigotry expressed in the shooter’s so-called ‘manifesto,’ Cruz said, labeling the shooting a ‘heinous act of terrorism and white supremacy.’”
Cruz, however, never condemned President Trump’s racist call for four nonwhite congresswomen to “go back” to where they came from. He has not denounced the president when he uses words such as “infested” to describe immigrants. He still fully supports a president who whips up hysteria about immigrants and propagates fear of an “invasion,” the very theme white nationalists use to target immigrants. Maybe someone in Texas should ask why he doesn’t do these things.
Even worse, as the Texas Tribune continues, “By bluntly acknowledging race’s apparent role in the shooting, the statements by Cruz and Bush were different from initial comments by other statewide elected officials including the state’s senior U.S. senator, John Cornyn, as well as Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. Abbott emphasized mental health in the immediate aftermath of the shooting Saturday evening, while Patrick decried cultural factors — such as violent video games — in a Fox News interview Sunday morning. He did say the shooting was ‘obviously a hate crime, I think, in my view, against immigrants.’” Even more bizarrely, Cornyn seems helpless as to how to respond. “Sadly, there are some issues, like homelessness and these shootings, where we simply don’t have all the answers,” he wrote on Twitter. On virtually no issue do we have all the answers, but that does not prevent us from taking obvious steps to address serious problems.
Cornyn is on the ballot in 2020, when voters in Texas get to render a verdict on a lawmaker who opposes gun-safety laws supports fear-mongering policies such as building a wall and enthusiastically backs Trump for reelection. He’s silent when asked about the president’s racist remarks. He supports and praises grossly unqualified nominees such as Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Tex.), who was forced to back out of consideration to become the director of national intelligence. Cornyn is, by definition, enabling Trump and providing cover for him — as though Trump had not spouted racism, as though he had not minimized the threat of white nationalist terror after the mosque attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March.
