U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, the Texas Democrat hoping to replace Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in the U.S. Senate, believes unarmed black Americans shouldn’t be killed by police in their own home.
Cruz apparently disagrees.
Prior to the two candidates’ debate Friday night in Dallas, Cruz took to Twitter to attack his opponent. But it seemed like more of an endorsement.
“In Beto O’Rourke’s own words,” the Republican candidate tweeted, with a video of O’Rourke speaking at a church about yet another unarmed black American being killed by a white police officer.
“How can it be in this day and age, in this very year, in this community, that a young man, African-American, in his own apartment, is shot and killed by a police officer?” O’Rourke said in the video. “And when we all want justice and the facts and the information to make an informed decision, what is released to the public? That he had a small amount of marijuana in his kitchen.”
O’Rourke was referring to the recent killing of Botham Shem Jean, a black Texan who was killed in his own home Sept. 6 by officer Amber Guyger, who claimed she thought she was in her own home when she fatally shot the unarmed man twice.
Just hours after the killing, police obtained a search warrant and later released what they found to local news: marijuana.
“They immediately began to smear him,” attorney Lee Merritt, who represents Jean’s family, told The Associated Press.
“How can that be just in this country?” O’Rourke asked the congregation in the video posted by Cruz. “How can we continue to lose the lives of unarmed black men in the United States of America at the hands of white police officers? That is not justice. That is not us. That can and must change. Are you with me on this?”
The crowd can be seen cheering for the nominee.
Twitter users quickly piled on Cruz’s evident self-own: