At a CNN Townhall on Thursday night, Democratic Congressman Beto O’Rourke, who is opposing incumbent GOP Sen. Ted Cruz in Texas, was his typically evasive self when asked about his recent bestowal of the nickname “Lyin’ Ted” on Cruz, a moniker first used by then-candidate Donald Trump in 2016. O’Rourke first claimed he had decided at the beginning of his recent debate with Cruz to attack him for being dishonest. When CNN’s Dana Bash asked if he regretted using the pejorative nickname, O’Rourke suddenly became shy, sighing, “I don’t know that that’s the way that I want to be talking in this campaign.”
Bash began: “You’ve been saying that people are sick of the pettiness and the smallness in politics, yet during Tuesday’s debate that you had with Senator Cruz, you took a page right out of President Trump’s playbook and you called Senator Cruz, ‘Lyin’ Ted.’ Why did you do that?”
O’Rourke answered, “Yeah, so there have been untold dollars spent on TV ads that are lies, that are dishonest, trying to scare you about me, trying to incite people based on fear. I went through a whole debate at SMU with Senator Cruz where he made up one story after another.”- READ MORE