Fact Check: Ads Attacking Greg Abbott Deceptively Alter Beto O’Rourke’s Comments on Policymaking
Or rather, Abbott’s campaign drew attention to an altered version of O’Rourke’s comments.
First event: In three important ways, the Abbott ad deceptively edited O’Rourke’s words about policing to try to make him sound more radical.
The first deceptive edit of the ad removed O’Rourke’s key words to make it sound like he was giving a broad, unsecured endorsement of Black activists. Lives Matter for drawing attention to the idea of bringing down the police. O’Rourke’s actual words are narrower: he praises activists for drawing attention to the idea of vandalism “the over-militarized line items of our police.”
The second deceptive edit removed the keywords to make it look like O’Rourke called for the “dismantlement” of police departments, end of story. He did indeed call for dismantling “and rebuilding” the departments in “several cases of necessity.”
The third scam edit is particularly serious. This joins phrases together from three different O’Rourke sentences. The stitch work makes it look like O’Rourke’s comment on the importance of Black Lives Matter activism, and how it is part of the civil rights tradition, is a comment on the importance. of bringing down the police and dismantling police departments.
For emotional effect, the ad interspersed O’Rourke’s altered words with a series of video clips of riots and looting.
But Abbott’s ad did not include O’Rourke’s comments about Minneapolis. And when the police caught it, the ad chopped O’Rourke’s words into pieces instead of letting Texans judge them for themselves.
We’ll look at O’Rourke’s position a little later. First, let’s take a look at how the Abbott ad created its deception.
The ad has removed the necessary words
After showing clips of protesters wearing masks, smoke in the street and a car on fire, Abbott’s ad showed O’Rourke on camera saying: “I really like Black Lives Matters and the protesters another love has put this front and center to placate.. “Then the screen switches to a stylized shot of a man’s moving mouth as O’Rourke’s voice says, ‘Absolutely dissapointing. destroy those police forces.”
But this is not what O’Rourke actually uttered. In fact, the ad removed two important groups of words, then stringed the remaining words together to change their meaning.
Here’s what O’Rourke said. The words in bold are the words that the ad has omitted.
“So I really love Black Lives Matters and the other protestors that have put this at the center of it, you know, these line items overuse our police force and instead invest that money in your community’s human resources make sure you have the services , help, support, necessary health care and no police intervention. And then also in some cases necessary, completely demolishing those police forces and rebuild them. ”
The ad moved a keyword phrase from sentence to sentence
The end of the ad features O’Rourke’s voice – over video clips of riots and looting – saying this: “Destroy, destroy the police force, that’s the only way things will turn out for good. than.”
But that’s not what O’Rourke uttered either.
So where is the quote supposed to come from? The Abbott campaign doesn’t want to elaborate, but it appears the campaign took three separate O’Rourke comments from the June 2020 interview and stitched them together as if they were one.
It wasn’t until more than a minute later – a minute and a half full of “slanderous” comments – that he exclaimed “that’s the only way things will get better.” And the context for these words is much different than the ad suggests.
This is the actual context.
O’Rourke praised Minneapolis’ decision to dismantle and replace the police department, saying the only solution to such a troubled department was to “completely dismantle that system and rebuild it.” intentionally with community members at the same table.”
Then O’Rourke said: “So let’s look at Black Lives Matter in that same context and from the same angle. What they’re doing right now is a very proud civil rights tradition and necessary, and that’s the only way to make things better.”
Abbott’s ad seems to have moved this quote – “it’s the only way things get better” – into a completely different sentence with a completely different meaning.
O’Rourke’s current location
When CNN asked O’Rourke’s campaign on Monday about his current stance on bringing down the police, spokesman Bowen said he doesn’t support it and never has. Again, O’Rourke himself said Wednesday, “I don’t think I’ve ever been in favor of bringing down the police.”
Because of the phrase “disappointing the police,” O’Rourke’s comments in the 2020 interview leave room for everyone to argue in some way. Defenders of his position may correctly note that he has not made a general call to eliminate all types of police funding. Opponents can correctly note that he spoke positively about taking away some police funding and dismantling (and rebuilding) some police departments.
“We should allow other departments and community support to respond to those challenges to allow the police force to focus on their most important work for public safety,” Bowen said. : solving violent crime”.
O’Rourke said Wednesday, in comments reported by Svitek of the Texas Tribune, that he doesn’t want law enforcement to have to deal with “issues where it’s a healthcare challenge.” more mental health and incidents can be resolved with a social. worker or non-law enforcement.”
CNN asked Bowen whether O’Rourke believes some money should be taken from the police budget and reallocated to these “other departments” to handle the work that O’Rourke thinks should be taken. go by the police or not.
“It was the wrong choice,” Bowen said, “We can’t guarantee the safety of our community focusing on one or the other, we have to do both. We have to invest in the this additional service so police departments can focus their resources on preventing and solving crime.”
