If you're wondering why Beto O'Rourke's campaign to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has caught fire in a way no one expected, his answer Tuesday night on MSNBC's "Hardball" with Host Chris Matthews about President Donald Trump's effort to militarize the border shows why.

Asked by an audience member who lives in a border town about the president's ramping up of rhetoric against immigrants and troop levels along the border, O'Rourke called it "ridiculous."

Advertisement:

"This idea, Andrea, that we can send 5,000 service members to the border and somehow stop migrants, refugees, asylum seekers fleeing the most dangerous countries in the hemisphere — or that we could build a 2,000-mile wall at a cost of $30 billion, where we'd have to take someone's ranch, or farm, or property through the use of eminent domain to build something that we don't need at a time of record security and safety for border communities like mine in El Paso..." he said. "It's ridiculous. It's again this idea that we can be governed by our fears."

He concluded: "Remember the proud heritage of this defining immigrant story, state, and experience that is Texas. That's who we are... El Paso is one of the safest cities in the United States of America — not in spite of, but because we are a city of immigrants."