Rep. Beth Van Duyne, R-Texas, rejected former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke’s suggestion that the Lone Star State is in play for Vice President Kamala Harris as she runs for the presidency at the top of the Democrat ticket.
O’Rourke, a Democrat, made his comments on MSNBC’s “The Inside Interview” on Monday.
“Look, I don't know what he's been smoking, but I also know that that man has lost three statewide elections, so he really is not familiar — if he thought he could win — he's not familiar with the voters in Texas,” Van Duyne said during an appearance on Newsmax’s “Wake Up America.” “Look at what Harris says. She wants to get rid of the oil and gas industry. You tell me how that's going to fly in Texas when you've got not only our economy that's dependent on that, but millions of Texans who actually have jobs in that sector. I don't think that's going to fly.”
The Texas congresswoman said that her home state also had more illegal immigrants than any other state in the nation due to Harris’ inaction.
“That is a direct result of Kamala Harris' lack of doing her job, not caring about the communities and the crime rates and not really caring about the long-term effect of our national security as a result of her border bills and her border policy,” she said. “That is important to Texans, where we're seeing communities where crime levels, we're seeing sex trafficking, drug trafficking. This is what's happening in the state of Texas. We're not going to take it for granted, we're not going to let up. But for Beto to sit here and argue that Harris is somehow like a shining knight in Texas, it is not going to happen. I am supporting [Sen.] Ted Cruz [R-Texas] in this. I think Cruz has got this race. I think President [Donald] Trump has earned the Texas vote. I think that's exactly what you're going to see in November.”
That being said, Van Duyne stressed that Republicans and Trump “absolutely cannot take anything for granted” and assume that Texas will swing red in November.
“Democrats are all excited now because they're no longer carrying around a corpse,” she said, referring to President Joe Biden, who ended his bid for reelection last month. “But what I've said is it's like they've gone from ‘Weekend at Bernie's’ now to Janice from ‘Friends.’ They don't have a serious candidate. They're trying to completely recreate this creature to act as if she has somehow had success. We've seen the terrible attorney general that she was in California, the criminals that she let out, the defund the police effort that she led — even as vice president. We've seen her failure at the border. She was the arsonist that set the inflation fire astart. She was the deciding vote in the Inflation Reduction Act, which was anything but, that led to some of the highest inflation that our country has ever seen.”
Voters in Texas and Florida will be taking Harris “seriously,” Van Duyne said, “because we know how many millions of dollars that they're going to be pumping into advertising in those key battle districts, those key congressional districts, to try to win the Democrat seats.”
“We're going to have to continue to get the message out, but I don't look at Texas as being vulnerable right now,” she added.
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Nicole Wells ✉
Nicole Wells, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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