The Media vs. Beto O’Rourke

Members of the Press……What the fuck?

Anatomy of a Smear Campaign: how the MSM joined forces with Bernie Sanders supporters and the rightwing media to take down Beto O’Rourke

Included on this list are articles which appeared in the national media and are either outright hitpieces or contain very derogatory comments about O’Rourke from mainstream media and some Bernie Sanders sites. Not included are the hundreds of snark attacks from ‘blue checks’ on twitter. Not included are all the rightwing websites which amplified the attacks the MSM made on O’Rourke. There were thousands of those. The MSM effectively did the rightwing’s job for them, destroying a viable Democratic candidate — one who ranked second only to Biden in attacks from the Russian media. I’m sure they are grateful. Especially now that they have also taken down Kamala Harris — the Russians’ third favorite target.

CNN and MSNBC are under-represented on this list which only includes (a non-exhaustive list of) articles that appeared in written form. Both cable channels were heavily invested in alternately attacking O’Rourke or erasing him. He had no surrogates defending him on cable news and some anchors (Brian Williams, Chris Matthews, Chuck Todd, Jake Tapper, Morning Joe, Anderson Cooper) made systematic attacks on him — always personal attacks, never for reasons of policy.

They also created a narrative of Beto O’Rourke vs. Pete Buttigieg for reasons known only to themselves as the candidates could not have been more different. Cable news and the MSM attacked O’Rourke while fawning on Buttigieg. For every attack on O’Rourke, there were a dozen puffpieces extolling the virtues of Mayor Pete while studiously avoiding any vetting of his very short, and very problematic (racially speaking) political career.

With the exception of the few days after the El Paso shooting, they didn’t cover any of O’Rourke’s many campaign stops while giving saturation, uncritical coverage to Pete Buttigieg’s campaign.

While the media frequently published articles on O’Rourke’s ‘failing campaign’, no mention could be found of the media’s smear campaign contributing to falling poll numbers and fundraising. The media created a self-fulfilling prophecy: trash a candidate enough, indulge in character assassination and you can destroy him or her even if, like O’Rourke, they

had just got 4M+ votes in the reddest state in the Union, lost by only 2.6% and could conceivably carry that state which — given its Electoral College votes — would block Trump’s reelection. Praise a candidate enough, give them enough coverage, and you can turn a small-town mayor who got 8,515 votes and lost Indiana State Treasurer by 27% in a state Obama won in 2008, into a ‘political phenomenon’.

In their coverage of the Democratic primary, the mainstream media displayed a bias worthy of “FakeNews”.

Tweet Quote from Seth Abramson July 13, 2019

The only question I have left about Beto is this: once American media completes its three-month run of orgasmic schadenfreude specifically targeted at hounding Beto out of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary for no particular reason, which candidate will they eliminate next?

Tweet Quote from AJ Delgado June 25, 2019 To Matty Glesias discussing his contention that Beto O’Rourke’s ‘hype’ wasn’t warranted.

Was his hype unwarranted or was his hype destroyed by much of the media who, curiously, went out of its way to mock, deride, and/or ignore him? I have never seen anything like it — it was like a gang of school kids colluding to give the cool kid the cold shoulder.

Tweet Quote from George Conway September 2, 2019

You could make a strong case that he [Beto O’Rourke] is their strongest general-election candidate. If the Dems win Texas, nothing else would matter.

Tweet Quote from Seth Abramson November 1, 2019

U.S. media made Trump and destroyed Beto, quite a track record.

Media attacks from the rightwing on O’Rourke: Club for Growth David McIntosh

September 4, 2018 the Club for Growth launched a 7 figure TV ad campaign against Beto O’Rourke repeating attacks by Silvestre Reyes when O’Rourke primaried Reyes, a conservative Democrat and 16 year veteran of Congress, for his House seat.

March 10, 2019 Politico by Alex Isenstadt “GOP meddles in Democratic nomination with takedown of O’Rourke — The Club for Growth sees the ex-Texas Congressman as a serious threat to Donald Trump and they’re treating him accordingly” — the TV ads would feign attacks from the left for identity politics — describing O’Rourke as a “privileged white male” — attacks that would be amplified by the ‘liberal’ media exponentially. The Club for Growth spent millions on TV ads in Iowa attacking O’Rourke — the only Democratic nominee they attacked.

Russian media attacks on O’Rourke

November 19, 2019 Clint Watts When results were tallied for mentions of Democratic candidates on Russia Today and Sputnik News, Beto O’Rourke ranked second only to Joe Biden in “unfavorable mentions”. So he was the second most feared Democratic candidate by the Russians and was trolled accordingly on twitter by troll farms. Nota bene: Kamala Harris was the Russians’ third favorite target.

The ‘Liberal’ Media

As the primary campaign progressed, the ‘liberal’ media attacked O’Rourke relentlessly. The Club for Growth, the Russians and GOP/rightwing media only needed to amplify (and they did) the attacks started by Bernie Sanders’ supporters and intensified by the mainstream media.

Why was the MSM carrying water for the GOP and the Club for Growth? The MSM showed no neutrality whatsoever in their coverage of O’Rourke. On the contrary, their attacks from the very beginning of his campaign were invariably petty, vicious, deriding O’Rourke while they simultaneously promoted a candidate with no relevant qualifications to be running for President — Pete Buttigieg — who also had a statewide loss in his background (a constant criticism made against O’Rourke). But O’Rourke had lost a Texas Senate seat by 2.6%. Buttigieg had lost Indiana State Treasurer by 27% despite praising the Tea Party — a racist political movement supported by the Club for Growth in opposition to Barack Obama’s election.

Attack on Beto O’Rourke from the DNC during the Texas Senate race

October 12, 2018 NYTimes Jonathan Martin & Matt Flegenheimer

At the most fraught time in the Senate race, the DNC attacks Beto O’Rourke concerning his fundraising, sending Matthew Miller to the NYTimes and MSNBC to complain that O’Rourke should be giving his donations to Democratic Senate candidates in other states as he is — according to them — not polling as well and “a Democrat cannot win in Texas”. The NYTimes reports that Ted Cruz is beating O’Rourke by 8% O’Rourke went on to lose by 2.6% a far smaller margin than the Democrats quoted in the article: McCaskill, Heitkamp, Bredesen lost by much bigger margins than O’Rourke did.

This attack by DNC surrogates would be widely amplified by Ted Cruz’s campaign, promoting the narrative that Beto is so selfish and anxious to get rich off the race even Democrats hate him.

O’Rourke got 4M+ votes, won independents for the first time in a generation, got 500K Republican votes.

Nota bene: in September 2018, O’Rourke donated $4.5M to the Texas Democratic Party for down-ticket races.

The New York/DC media’s anti-Southern bias

O’Rourke was the Democratic candidate who was most ridiculed and attacked by the NYC/DC media establishment since Bill Clinton. Before Clinton, Jimmy Carter shared the dubious distinction of being loathed by the “Eastern Establishment media”. Before him, LBJ was the target of their vitriol. But in their day the media did not have the pervasive influence it does today and of course social media and ‘blue checks’ didn’t exist to promote their narratives. And great “retail politicians” like Clinton (and O’Rourke) could overcome the bias. Despite the Eastern Establishment media’s hatred of Southern Democrats, it must be pointed out that — with the exception of Barack Obama — all Democratic Presidents since JFK have been Southerners.

A Timeline — the Hitpiece Collection

November 4, 2018 Politico by Tim Alberta “Did Beto Blow It?”

November 7, 2018 Slate “This kid reporter has some strong opinions on why Beto O’Rourke sucks”

November 9, 2018 WaPo by James Henson “Beto O’Rourke should run for the Senate in 2020”

November 10, 2018 David Sirota (once and future Bernie staffer) tweets that Beto O’Rourke should run for Speaker of the House.

November 20, 2018 Politico by Bill Scher “How the Beto Bubble Could Burst”

November 27, 2018 CNN by Jill Filipovic “Beto-mania doesn’t do justice to women”

November 29, 2018 Bernie Sanders and his staff meet in Burlington, Vermont to discuss the way forward. It is decided that Beto O’Rourke represents a threat to Sanders’ Presidential campaign because of his ability to turn out young voters, his progressive positions and his phenomenal grassroots fundraising. And so a massive smear campaign was initiated.

December 3, 2018 Jacobin by Branko Marcetic “Beto O’Rourke should not run for President”

December 5, 2018 A 20something Bernie Sanders supporter wrote an op-ed in the WaPo. Elizabeth Bruenig who oddly combines socialist politics with fealty to the Roman Catholic Church and opposition to abortion writes the first full-fledged hitpiece about O’Rourke.

Bruenig’s attack was immediately amplified by The Hill, Vice, RealClearPolitics, The Atlantic, Slate, NY Mag, Vanity Fair, TheWeek, numerous Bernie sites and of course the RW sites all picked it up.

Then began David Sirota’s frenzied attacks on O’Rourke — the guy he wanted to become Speaker of the House just a month before. Writing articles to be published In the Guardian (which now seems to serve as a vanity publisher for op-eds by Bernie supporters). All Sirota’s articles he later amplified on twitter, retweeting repeatedly and had reprinted on various Bernie websites while still insisting he was an ‘independent journalist’.

December 6, 2018 Chicago Tribune by Elizabeth Bruenig “Beto O’Rourke is not the progressive some imagine”

December 6, 2018 Slate by Ben Mathis-Lilley “The First Epic online meltdown of the 2020 Democratic primary has begun and it’s about Beto O’Rourke”

December 6, 2018 DailyBeast by Matt Lewis “Beto is Old News Already, Here’s the Democrats’ Best Bet for 2020”

December 14, 2018 Politico by David Siders “The left blindsides Beto”

December 20, 2018 Sirota’s first anti-Beto piece is published by the Guardian claiming O’Rourke is actually a Republican. The piece is very short on facts and very long on innuendo. A propaganda hitpiece.

December 21, 2018 Vox by Matthew Yglesias “Beto O’Rourke’s voting record is more conservative than the average Democrat” (according to Sanders supporters)

December 22, 2018 Sirota’s second anti-Beto piece is published by the Guardian claiming O’Rourke was Big Oil’s candidate. Again misrepresenting the facts: O’Rourke had received individual donations from some of the 350K Texans who work in the oil and gas industry. He received no corporate or PAC donations. O’Rourke had, in fact, stopped taking PAC donations long before Bernie Sanders did.

December 23, 2018 “Inside Bernie World’s Attack on Beto O’Rourke” NBC News article written by Jonathan Allen and Alex Seitz-Wald first reported on the Bernie supporters’ attacks on Beto O’Rourke

December 28, 2018 The Hill interview with Elizabeth Bruenig “Idea O’Rourke is the only Dem who can beat Trump is ‘overstated’”

January 4, 2019 Common Dreams (a Bernie website) published an article retaliating against the NBC article concerning the conspiracy to take down O’Rourke’s campaign (which he would not even launch for another 3 months). They denied it existed and yet they lay out their path in this article.

January 10, 2019 Jezebel “Is Beto O’Rourke campaigning or having a midlife crisis?”

January 11, 2019 WaPo by Jennifer Rubin “Enough with the Instagram, Beto”

January 11, 2019 CNN by Byron Wolf “Being Beto: How 2020 is shaping up to be the TMI election”

January 16, 2019 the WaPo published an article by Jenna Johnson who had managed to get an interview with O’Rourke who was refusing to speak to journalists as he had not decided whether or not to run for the Presidency. O’Rourke granted the interview to the camp Trump had erected in Tornillo near El Paso. She had no interest in that, just in getting a scoop that O’Rourke was or was not going to join the Presidential race. When O’Rourke gave her a non-committal answer to a question about immigration, she turned it into a headline about O’Rourke having no opinion on immigration and a hitpiece which

would be widely circulated and amplified by both left-wing and right-wing websites, notably Breitbart and the National Review.

This was the launch of endless attacks on O’Rourke in the Washington Post.

January 17, 2019 CNN by Chris Cillizza “This interview shows why all the Beto buzz might be overblown”

January 17, 2019 WaPo by Carter Eskew “Preseason is over for Beto O’Rourke”

January 19, 2019 Nia-Malika Henderson attacks Beto O’Rourke in an article published on CNN’s website in which she rails against the fact that O’Rourke was unemployed (he had completed his term in Congress a week before), had gone on a weeklong road trip and written a diary about it. She claimed that women and people of color are unable to be unemployed and go on roadtrips. Perhaps she had just watched Green Book? Otherwise, her claims that only people with ‘white male privilege’ could do so were obviously false. Julian Castro — a candidate she supports and a person of color — has been unemployed since December 2016 and has spent months travelling in early primary states. I won’t even mention the fact that Henderson was rumored to be dating Glenn Beck who trashed Beto 24/7 during the Texas Senate race.

January 22, 2019 WaPo by Jennifer Rubin “Beto O’Rourke needs to get off the road”

January 23, 2019 New York Mag by Eric Levitz “Biden and Beto Boosted GOP Candidates in 2018. That’s disqualifying”

January 27, 2019 Jezebel “Is Beto a punk or is he a poseur?”

January 29, 2019 WaPo by Jennifer Rubin “The post 2018 buzz was all about O’Rourke not Stacey Abrams”

February 7, 2019 Jezebel “Beto O’Rourke’s lost weekend”

February 12, 2019 WaPo by Jennifer Rubin “Is Beto O’Rourke back for good?”

February 22, 2019 Boston Globe by Michael Cohen “Beto O’Rourke could be Dems’ best shot at taking back the Senate”

February 26, 2019 WaPo by David Byler “Beto for President is a bad idea. To help his party he needs to run for the Senate”

March 1, 2019 Bloomberg by Jonathan Bernstein “Beto O’Rourke’s run for the White House could cost Democrats a Senate seat”

March 2, 2019 CNN by Harry Enten “Beto O’Rourke probably isn’t some electoral magic bullet”

March 2, 2019 NYTimes by Glenn Thrush “White House Ambitions Cloud Democratic Hopes to Win the Senate”

March 4, 2019 Politico by David Siders “What Does Beto Believe?”

March 4, 2019 Esquire by Charles Pierce “Some Dems need to run for the Senate”

March 12, 2019 WaPo by Jennifer Rubin “How Beto O’Rourke can catch fire if he enters the 2020 fray”

March 13, 2019 Vanity Fair by Joe Hagan “I’m Just Born to Do This” Vanity Fair takes a quote out of context to put on their cover and launch 10,000 hitpieces

March 13, 2009 Kasie Hunt on MSNBC tweets the quote taken out of context on the VF cover and opines “I’m imagining Hillary Clinton giving the same quote and wondering about the reaction.” Hunt seems to have a shorter memory than I do. I can recall her constant criticisms of Hillary during the 2016 race.

March 13, 2019 WaPo by Jennifer Rubin “What have all these 2020 Democrats actually done?”

March 14, 2019 Beto O’Rourke announces he will run for President via a short video.

March 14, 2019 Paste Mag by Shane Ryan “Beto O’Rourke is the candidate for vapid morons”

March 14, 2001 Vox hitpiece by Laura McGann including every nasty tweet she could find about Beto running for President. She includes the flagrant lie that Beto went on a “three month roadtrip”. His road trip lasted 5 days. Shocking that this article was even published — especially in Vox which otherwise had shown itself to be fair to O’Rourke.

March 14, 2019 Splinter by Libby Watson “The Hubris of Beto O’Rourke”

March 14, 2019 Slate “Not clear if Beto O’Rourke is running or not but we can expect that kind of not knowingness if he does”

March 14, 2019 Slate “Beto O’Rourke is betting his mojo will translate to the Presidential race”

March 14, 2019 Slate “For Beto the decision comes down to running for President or taking a semester abroad in Australia”

March 14, 2019 WaPo by Jennifer Rubin “Beto O’Rourke jumps in. Now here’s the big question”

March 14, 2019 WaPo by Greg Sargent “Beto O’Rourke as the anti-Trump?”

March 14, 2019 WaPo by Henry Olsen “Beto O’Rourke’s presidential campaign rests on one thing: his vanity”

March 15, 2019 DailyBeast by Marlow Stern “Seth Meyer Rips Beto”

March 15, 2019 DailyBeast by Danielle Tcholakian “Unbearable Male Privilege of Beto O’Rourke”

March 15, 2019 Guardian by Kate Aronoff a Bernie Sanders supporter who works for The Intercept — the Sanders’ website — published a hitpiece on O’Rourke once again in the falsely claiming O’Rourke’s Senate campaign was funded by the fossil fuel industry.

March 15, 2019 Politico by Natasha Korecki “Not one woman got that kind of coverage: Beto backlash begins”

March 15, 2019 Jezebel “How punk is Beto really?”

March 15, 2019 WaPo by Jennifer Rubin “A message Beto can deliver”

March 15, 2019 CNN by Lauren Dezenski in which she claims Annie Leibovitz copied (plagiarized?) previous magazine covers of John Edwards and Ronald Reagan

March 15, 2019 WaPo by Kathleen Parker “Beto O’Rourke’s 2020 campaign is a youthful folly”

March 15, 2019 Slate “Beto O’Rourke has no idea what he stands for or what he brings to the field. Why is he running?

March 16, 2019 New York Times by Gail Collins “What this country needs is a skateboard President”

March 16, 2019 Guardian “Beto 2020: a masterclass in male entitlement” by Arwa Mahdawi who wrote the unconvincing Guardian op-ed “Bernie Sanders is the most feminist 2020 candidate, as far as I’m concerned”

March 17, 2019 WaPo by Felicia Sonmez “RNC links ‘noted Irishman Beto O’Rourke’s heritage’ to 1998 DUI arrest”

March 18, 2019 WaPo by Jennifer Rubin “Savior or Slacker?”

March 18, 2019 Jacobin by Luke Savage “With Beto O’Rourke there’s no there there”

March 18, 2019 New York Mag by Ed Kilgore “What Beto Backlash? Fundraising Haul Undercuts Reports of a Disastrous Launch”

March 18, 2019: WaPo by Jenna Johnson “Upbeat Sentiments Absent Specifics” (n.b. Johnson would ignore all Beto’s many detailed policies when they were released

March 18, 2019 The Cut New York Mag by Amanda Arnold “Beto O’Rourke Cannot Stay off Countertops”

March 18, 2019 WaPo by Ed Rogers “The Beto O’Rourke Backlash”

March 18, 2019 WaPo by Helaine Olen “Beto O’Rourke and Gen X’s traditionalism”

March 18, 2019 The Cut New York Mag “Beto O’Rourke is Officially Running for Totally Kind of Hot”

March 19, 2019 Jezebel “Beto O’Rourke has already made a campaign promise he probably won’t keep”

March 19, 2019 Jezebel “Let’s check in with former VJ Kennedy and her new nickname for Beto O’Rourke”

March 19, 2019 WaPo by Ben Terris “The Politics of Beto and Amy O’Rourke’s Marriage” a hitpiece mascarading as a puffpiece full of unverified rumors and innuendo which would be widely amplified by the rightwing media — nota bene: no other candidate’s marriage has come in for criticism and unsubstantiated gossip by the ‘liberal’ media

March 19, 2019 WaPo by Marc Thiessen “Beto O’Rourke is a Loser”

March 20, 2019 Slate “Wait, is Beto O’Rourke a strong candidate or not”

March 20, 2019 NYTimes by Thomas Edsall “Is Betomania real or phony?” — he sides with phony naturally

March 20, 2019 Democratic activist Xavier Perez (a Sanders supporter) claims O’Rourke’s first fundraising report of $6.1M includes $4.5M from the Texas Democratic Party. This is widely amplified in the media despite being totally false. O’Rourke did donate $4.5M to the Texas Democratic Party in September 2018 for down-ticket races in Texas. The money was spent.

March 20, 2019 Slate “Beto O’Rourke missed figuring out why he’s running in the first place”

March 20, 2019 Baristas: get off our counters Kelly Weill DailyBeast

March 20, 2019 DailyBeast by Justin Baragona “Texas LtGov Dan Patrick says Beto O’Rourke is light in the loafers”

March 20, 2019 WaPo by Margaret Sullivan “Beto, Biden and Bernie: The B-Boys and the media’s dangerous, self-fulfilling prophecy”

March 22, 2019 The Guardian by Moira Donegan who describes herself as an “angry American feminist” but one who uses British spelling “Who anointed Beto O’Rourke to be our political saviour — He did”.

March 22, 2019 Jacobin by Luke Thibault “Don’t let Beto O’Rourke kill Medicare for All”

March 22, 2019 WaPo by Elizabeth Spiers “Beto is a Generation X Cliché”

March 23, 2019 DailyBeast by Sam Brodey “Beto was rare vote against tough-on-Russia bills”

March 23, 2019 Slate “If you don’t know Beto O’Rourke from Pete Buttigieg”

March 27, 2019 The Intercept by Rachel Cohen “O’Rourke’s Free Ride on Charter Schools Won’t Last”

March 29, 2019 WaPo, the Ranking Committee “Buttigieg is leaving Beto in the dust”

March 29, 2019 WaPo “Beto who? It’s the week of Pete Buttigieg”

March 30, 2019 Beto O’Rourke formally launches his campaign with speeches in El Paso, Houston and Austin.

April 2, 2019 WaPo by Jennifer Rubin “A study in contrasts: Klobuchar and O’Rourke”

April 5, 2019 DailyBeast by Olivia Messer “Diamond & Silk compare Beto to slaveholder”

April 7, 2019 WaPo “Beto O’Rourke says Netanyahu is Racist@

April 7, 2019 San Diego Union-Tribune “Race plays a role in O’Rourke’s campaign” by Ruben Navarrette n.b. Navarette is a Republican who gets amplified by the liberal media and will repeatedly be quoted by the MSM for derogatory statements about O’Rourke

April 7, 2019 Politico by Peter Canellos “Beto and Buttigieg pretend to be Kennedys”

April 10, 2019 BuzzFeed by Molly Hensley-Clancy “Inside Story of the Republican-backed Super PAC that Helped Get Beto O’Rourke Elected”

April 10, 2019 WaPo by Molly Roberts “How Pete Buttigieg stole Beto O’Rourke’s mojo”

April 12, 2019 CNN Politics “John Kasich criticizes Beto O’Rourke and praises Pete Buttigieg”

April 15, 2019 Politico by David Siders “The big idea? Beto O’Rourke doesn’t have on”

April 16, 2019 WaPo by James Hohmann “Taxes Show Candidates (Beto O’Rourke) Gave to Charity but not a ton”

April 17, 2019 Politico by Jack Schaefer “Why the Media Dumped Beto for Mayor Pete”

April 17, 2019 Slate “Up your charity game, Beto O’Rourke”

April 17, 2019 Politico by Christopher Cadelago “Beto O’Rourke Confronts Cable TV Drought”

April 17, 2019 USA Today by William Cummings “Student confronts Beto O’Rourke about charitable donations”

April 17, 2019 Politico “Why the Media Dumped Beto for Mayor Pete”

April 17, 2019 Politico by David Siders “Beto O’Rourke defends charitable giving record following release of tax returns”

April 17, 2019 BuzzFeed by Molly Hensley-Clancy “Beto O’Rourke made over $1M from a family investment company that dealt in pharma and fossil fuel stocks”

April 18, 2019 Politico by “Beto O’Rourke confronts cable TV drought”

April 20, 2019 NYTimes Astead Herndon and Matt Flegenheimer “Should a White Man be the Face of the Democratic Party in 2020’

April 25, 2019 Newsday by Cynthia Allen “Beto O’Rourke’s uncharitable giving”

April 26, 2019 New York Mag by Ed Kilgore “Is Beto losing his mojo? Did Mayor Pete Steal it from him?”

April 27, 2019 WaPo by Jenna Johnson “Beto switches style as spotlight dims”

April 27, 2019 Guardian by Charles Davis “Can the trip redeem his campaign”

April 27, 2019 WaPo by Jennifer Rubin “Mr. O’Rourke’s tax returns bare the extent he and his wife have benefited from their parents’ largesse”

April 29, 2019 WaPo Jenna Johnson and another hitpiece — Beto’s campaign is ‘struggling’

April 29, 2019 second WaPo Jenna Johnson hitpiece of the day: Beto switches style and tone

April 30, 2019 O’Rourke is the first candidate in the race to release a climate change plan, so the WaPo trashes it — article by Stephen Stromberg

April 30, 2019 The Hill by Zack Budryk “Texas Lt Gov calls Beto O’Rourke a ‘moron’”

April 30, 2019 BuzzFeed by Molly Hensley-Clancy “Beto 2020 is still in flux — staffers know they’re behind”

April 30, 2019 New Republic by Emily Atkin “Beto O’Rourke won’t demonize fossil fuel industry”

April 30, 2019 DailyBeast by Justin Baragona “Texas Lt Gov tells Laura Ingraham Beto O’Rourke is light in the loafers”

May 1, 2019 NBCNews by Gwen Aviles repeats Lt Gov’s idiot comment to Ingraham — this is news?

May 2, 2019 Politico by “O’Rourke signs Fossil Fuel Pledge, returns donations”

May 3, 2019 New York Daily News “Beto O’Rourke tops Dems in matchup with Trump: poll” CNN national poll — after this, media criticism of Beto intensified further

May 3, 2019 DailyBeast by Margaret Carlson “Beto Blew it” 74 year old Carlson cast sexual aspersions on O’Rourke, insulting his wife as well as him, in this bizarrely high-school vicious diatribe of personal attacks which, had it been written by a 74 year old male pundit, would have ended his career — this ridiculous article was amplified to the max by Breitbart, National Review, Red State, etc. making one wonder who Noah Shachtman is serving

May 4, 2019 Jonathan Allen, NBC News accuses the Pod Save America guys Jon Favreau and Dan Pfeiffer of being “Beto O’Rourke’s shadow spokesmen”

May 10, 2019 Politico by Michael Kruse “Beto O’Rourke’s Long History of Failing Upward”

May 12, 2019 WaPo by Jennifer Rubin “A Tale of Two Resets”

May 12, 2019 DailyBeast by Barbie Nadeau “Beto 2.0: reboot after lag”

May 12, 2019 Guardian by Ed Pilkingon “The Astonishing Disappearing Act of Beto O’Rourke”

May 13, 2019 Politico by David Siders “O’Rourke: I need to do a better job of talking to a national audience”

May 13, 2019 WaPo by Philip Bump “Why possible Democratic Senate candidates shouldn’t necessarily balk at running in red states”

May 13, 2019 Jacobin by Luke Savage “We can do way better than these guys”

May 14, 2019 DailyBeast “Beto apologizes on The View”

May 14, 2019 Jezebel “Beto has some regrets”

May 14, 2019 Politico by Katie Galioto “Trump on Beto: What the Hell Happened?

May 14, 2019 WaPo by Jenna Johnson “Beto O’Rourke hits The View as he tries to reboot his campaign”

May 14, 2019 WaPo by Jennifer Rubin “The first big ‘reset’ interview for Beto O’Rourke”

May 14, 2019 WaPo by Jennifer Rubin “Town Halls will truly test Kamala Harris and Beto O’Rourke”

May 14m 2019 Politico by “Beto O’Rourke characterized his decision to launch campaign via Vanity Fair cover a mistake”

May 15, 2019 Vanity Fair “How the media fell out of love with Beto O’Rourke”

May 15, 2019 Politico by “We’re cutting out some of this ear hair”

May 16, 2019 DailyBeast Danielle Tcholakian (a part-time intern) “Beto’s Shitty Reboot”

May 16, 2019 Jezebel “Beto O’Rourke livestreamed his haircut”

May 16, 2019 WaPo by Ed Rogers “Will the Democrats Give up on Beto O’Rourke?”

May 16, 2019 WaPo by Karen Tumulty “Would a female presidential candidate survive putting her haircut on social media?

May 16, 2019 Splinter by Libby Watson “Some things presidential candidates could do instead of running for President”

May 17, 2019 WaPo by Christine Emba “I am not running for President”

May 19, 2019 Jezebel “The very definition of privilege that props up white men”

May 21, 2019 DailyBeast Hanna Trudo “Beto O’Rourke Flameout”

May 21, 2019 Politico by “Beto O’Rourke began his town hall with a call to bipartisanship but within an hour his tone had changed”

May 21, 2019 WaPo by Philip Bump “Brutal new 2020 numbers for Beto O’Rourke

May 21, 2019 Vanity Fair by Tina Nguyen “Nobody is bothering to attack Beto O’Rourke Anymore”

May 22, 2019 WaPo by Jenna Johnson “Beto O’Rourke Uses CNN Town Hall to try to reboot his campaign”

May 22, 2019 WaPo by Elizabeth Bruenig “Young voters have Buttigiet and Beto. So why do they prefer old socialists?” Bruenig is a Sanders supporter who is anti-abortion.

May 22, 2019 Politico by “No candidate started the race with loftier expectations or fell back so quickly afterward”

May 22, 2019 Politico by “Beto O’Rourke has stalled at 5% of the polls”

May 24, 2019 WaPo by Tyler Page for Bloomberg “Buttigieg surges as some voters begin suffering Beto Overload”

May 26, 2019 CBSNews by Ed O’Keefe “Can Beto bounce back?”

May 26, 2019 DailyBeast by Matt Lewis “Beto.. just another leftie”

May 27, 2019 Splinter by Jack Crosbie “I refuse to read this incredibly long profile of Beto O’Rourke driving a van”

May 28, 2019 DailyBeast by Marlow Stern “Beto says he’s an asshole”

May 28, 2019 Washington Monthly by Martin Longman “Beto O’Rourke is hoping documentary will revive his campaign”

May 28, 2019 Jezebel by Ashley Reece “Beto O’Rourke will never fail”

May 29, 2019 WaPo by Jennifer Rubin “OK, mainstream media, prove your coverage isn’t sexist”

June 1, 2019 NewYorker by Dorothy Wickenden “Beto O’Rourke struggles to find his place”

June 3, 2019 USAToday by Eileen Rivers “Comics say to Beto O’Rourke enough with the videos”

June 5, 2019 WaPo by Jennifer Rubin “Beto should look at that Senate poll number”

June 6, 2019 DailyBeast by Matt Witstein “Stephen Colbert tells Beto to run for Senate”

June 6, 2019 The Atlantic by David Graham “Beto’s term limits plan is a bad idea”

June 6, 2019 Reuters by Chris Kahn “Beto O’Rourke…struggling on national stage”

June 6, 2019 WaPo by David Byler “The best argument for Beto O’Rourke is electability. That’s bad news for him”

June 5, 2019 Axios by Rashaan Ayesh “Texas Democrats would rather see Beto O’Rourke run for Senate”

June 5, 2019 VoiceOfAmerica from the WaPo “O’Rourke campaigns with wife as he struggles with women”

June 8, 2019 Jezebel “What happens when the new golden boy of the 2020 election (Mayor Pete) crosses paths with the season’s old fling”

June 9, 2019 Politico by Bianca Quilantan “O’Rourke unfazed by weak poll numbers”

June 13, 2019 Politico by “O’Rourke lagging in the polls takes a swipe at Joe Biden”

June 17, 2019 CNN “Jake Tapper presses Beto O’Rourke about low poll numbers”

June 19, 2019 BuzzFeed by Molly Hensley-Clancy “These donors helped give Beto O’Rourke a historic starts. They’re disappointed.”

June 20, 2019 WaPo by Monica Hesse “The wife guys of the 2020 presidential election”

June 26, 2019 Newsweek by Angus Johnston “Beto’s war tax isn’t just dumb, it’s un-American”

June 26, 2019 The Cut New York Mag by Amanda Arnold “Beto is in over his head”

June 27, 2019 Jezebel “Beto O’Rourke’s little Spanish drop nobody asked for”

June 27, 2019 Politico by Christopher Cadelago “Castro decks Beto”

June 27, 2019 CNN by Chris Cillizza “Beto was so bad last night I named him a ‘loser’twice”

June 27, 2019 WaPo by Jennifer Rubin “First debate: who won, who lost and what matters”

June 27, 2019 Politico by “Beto O’Rourke got roughed up”

June 27, 2019 Politico by Tim Augusta “Beto O’Rourke is a total non-factor in the debate”

June 27, 2019 Politico by “Beto O’Rourke answering a question in Spanish felt gimmicky”

June 28, 2019 CNN by Chris Cillizza “Can Pete Buttigieg avoid the Beto Bust?”

July 1, 2019 Philadelphia Inquirer by Carmina Hachenburg “First I laughed at Democratic nominees speaking Spanish”

July 2, 2019 Politico by David Siders “O’Rourke says he’s not aware of his fundraising numbers”

July 2, 2019 FrontPage Mag by Daniel Greenfield “Beto O’Rourke is Losing his Mind”

July 4, 2019 411 by Bryan Kristopowitz “The 411 Dumpster Fire of the Week: Beto O’Rourke”

July 5, 2019 Politico by David Siders “Reeling O’Rourke Seeks a Way Forward”

July 5, 2019 Politico by “O’Rourke’s campaign an inversion of what it was 4 months ago”

July 5, 2019 Seattle Times by Will Wessert & Ryan Foley “Rich father-in-law has helped, complicated O’Rourke’s career”

July 5, 2019 Chicago Tribune by Will Wessert & Ryan Foley “Meet the former Chicago businessman ‘ the ‘Warren Buffet of real estate’ — who became Beto O’Rourke’s father-in-law and patron”

July 8, 2019 Splinter by Libby Watson “Rebooto O’Rourke”

July 9, 2019 WaPo by John Paul Brammer “Julian Castro can’t speak Spanish. Here’s why that’s so authentic”

July 11, 2019 Jezebel by Clio Chang “Explaining Beto O’Rourke who stands on tables and that’s pretty much it”

July 13, 2019 WaPo Jenna Johnson & Emily Davies “They used to be Beto O’Rourke fans but Texans’ allegiance to him has vanished” (n.b. cites 4 ex-supporters whereas a Texas poll showed O’Rourke leading all other Democrats by double digits”

July 14, 2019 The Guardian by Debbie Nathan — allegedly a journalist in El Paso though she seems to be a blogger. It is a genealogical expose on Beto and Amy O’Rourke’s ancestors. This ‘scandal’ was amplified by Vox, HuffPost, The View, People Mag, Time, WaPo, NBC, ABC, Politico, The Hill. None of those news sites have taken an interest in the possibilities of other candidates and their spouses’ having slaveholding ancestors or paying genealogists to find out like Ms. Nathan did.

July 15, 2019 CNN by Ben Geldon “Beto O’Rourke’s campaign cools down”

July 15, 2019 Bloomberg by Mark Niquette “Beto O’Rourke’s Fundraising Collapses as Poll Numbers Recede”

July 15, 2019 USAToday by Stephen Gruber-Miller “Why are you running for President?”

July 15, 2019 Politico by “O’Rourke says his and wife’s ancestors owned slaves”

July 16, 2019 Politico by “Beto O’Rourke raised less in the 3rd quarter than he did in the first 24 hours of his campaign”

July 16, 2019 CNN by Chris Cillizza “Beto Boom goes bust, bigly”

July 16, 2019 WaPo by Jenna Johnson “What happened to Beto O’Rourke”

July 16, 2019 Salon by D. Watkins “What Beto O’Rourke gets wrong in his appeal for black votes”

July 16, 2019 DailyBeast “Beto Going Bust” by Hanna Trudo

July 16, 2019 WaPo by Jenna Johnson “Beto O’Rourke Raises a lackluster $3.7 million”

July 16, 2019 NYTimes “Beto O’Rourke’s Bad Quarter”

July 16, 2019 Mediaite by Joe DePaolo “The Harder they come, the harder they fall: Beto O’Rourke campaign going broke”

July 16, 2019 CNN by Harry Enten “Beto O’Rourke qualifies for 3rd debate after awful week”

July 18, 2019 FiveThirtyEight by Nate Silver “Beto O’Rourke doesn’t have a base”

July 19, 2019 Boston Globe by Jazmine Ulloa “How is Beto O’Rourke hoping to revive his campaign”

July 20, 2019 Politico by “O’Rourke expands national staff despite weak fundraising”

July 21, 2019 Politico by “De Blasio blasts Beto O’Rourke on Medicare for All”

July 21, 2019 NBCNews by Alex Seitz-Wald “Beto O’Rourke’s campaign is cratering”

July 22, 2019 Sun Sentinel by Ryan Rusak “Beto O’Rourke’s presidential run has hit rock bottom so fast”

July 23, 2019 DailyBeast by Matt Wilstein “Beto O’Rourke battles Meghan McCain over Trump-Nazi analogy”

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July 26, 2016 WaPo by Avi Selk “A Campaign Trail cliché finally bombs”

July 28, 2019 WaPo by Jenna Johnson “For Beto O’Rourke Tuesday’s Debate looms large”

July 28, 2019 TheAtlantic by Edward-Isaac Dovere “Beto’s 2020 campaign is struggling”

July 29, 2019 NPR by Jessica Taylor “Debate may be last-ditch effort for struggling Democrats to stay alive”

July 30, 2019 NYTimes by Mimi Schwartz “Where did it go wrong for Beto”

July 31, 2019 TheWeek “CNN presents Beto O’Rourke with brutal headlines about his ‘lackluster’ debate performance”

July 31, 2019 Vanity Fair by Eric Lutz “Beto, Delaney and other big losers”

July 31, 2019 WaPo by Ed Rogers “Ranking the first Detroit Democratic debaters”

August 1, 2019 Mashable by Nicole Gallucci “Beto O’Rourke wants to remind you that he really loves punk and his wife”

August 1, 2019 Yahoo News “Pressure on Beto O’Rourke to increase voter appeal”

August 2, 2019 Vice by Colin Joyce “Watch Beto O’Rourke Talk About that time he was in a punk band — again”

August 4, 2019 Splinter by Caitlin Cruz “Beto O’Rourke makes an excellent point about mass shootings and Trump” then the article goes on to throw gratuitous insults at O’Rourke and tell him to drop out of the race and run for Senate

August 5, 2019 CBSNews by Emily Tillett “Beto O’Rourke rips President Trump in expletive-filled rant after El Paso shooting”

August 6, 2019 The Hill by Zack Budryk “Biden tops O’Rourke by 9 pts in Texas” nota bene: this is in direct contradiction to every other poll taken

August 7, 2019 CBSNews by Jason Silverstein “Trump mocks Beto O’Rourke’s ‘phony name’”

August 7, 2019 WaPo by Tim Elfrink “Trump claims Beto O’Rourke uses a ‘phony name to indicate Hispanic heritage’”

August 7, 2019 Houston Chronicle by Michael Lindenberger “Beto’s wrong. Trump should be welcomed in El Paso

August 7, 2019 Politico by “Trump mocks O’Rourke before visit to El Paso”

August 8, 2019 DailyBeast by Audrey McNamara “Trump bashes Beto O’Rourke during visit with El Paso victims and medical staff”

NOTA BENE: while most media outlets refrained from attacking Beto O’Rourke in the aftermath of the El Paso shooting and even wrote some supportive articles — neither the DailyBeast nor the WaPo (O’Rourke’s most dedicated attackers) praised O’Rourke without a mention that he should drop out of the race and run for Senate.

August 8, 2019 Politico by “Trumps ridicules ‘Crazy Beto’”

August 9, 2019 Yahoo News “Beto O’Rourke’s campaign has been downhill since live streaming his trip to the dentist”

August 10, 2019 WaPo by Jenna Johnson “Not Ocasio-Cortez, not O’Rourke: an El Paso congresswoman’s different approach

August 10, 2019 Houston Chronicle by the ‘Editorial Board’ and in fact written by a Republican recently hired by the Chronicle (a GOP leaning paper which endorsed John Cornyn in 2014) “Beto, come home. Texas needs you” — this article would be cited by every major media outlet and on cable news repeatedly to encourage O’Rourke to drop out of the Presidential race and run for the Senate — see article by same author dated August 7th which was ignored by the national media — this became a rallying cry for all O’Rourke’s critics to encourage him to drop out of the Presidential race — these ‘liberals’ ignoring the fact the author of that op-ed is a Republican, the Chronicle has always supported John Cornyn and there were already 8 candidates running for the nomination — 4 of them women, 4 PoC — all of whom would have caused the ‘woke’ media to once again attack O’Rourke with their ‘white male privilege’ campaign as the Chronicle was well aware.

August 12, 2019 USAToday by Rebecca Morin “Texas needs you” — another drop out of the race and run for Senate piece

August 12, 2019 The Intercept by Aida Chavez “A better Beto: Former Beto O’Rourke Organizers rally behind new Texas Senate candidate”

August 13, 2019 DailyBeast by Margaret Carlson “Beto O’Rourke’s Finest Hour” — what appears to be a positive article turns into a series of criticisms, snark and ultimately an attempt to push O’Rourke out of the race and into a Senate run again

August 13, 2019 WaPo by Jennifer Rubin “Saving future Democratic debates”

August 13, 2019 CNN by Chris Cillizza “Is it time for Beto to go home”

August 14, 2019 CBSNews by Emily Tillett “Beto O’Rourke heads back to the 2020 campaign trail as some Texans urge Senate bid”

August 14, 2109 Vanity Fair by Eric Lutz “Is Beto O’Rourke better off in Texas?”

August 14, 2019 Politico by David Siders “O’Rourke resumes campaign amid calls for his exit”

August 14, 2019 CNN by Chris Cillizza “How failed Presidential candidates could hold the key to a Democratic Senate”

August 14, 2019 Yahoo Finance “Texas newspaper calls on O’Rourke to drop out and run for Senate”

August 14, 2019 WaPo by Aaron Blake “Democrats’ uneasy 2020 reality: they need the likes of O’Rourke…”

August 14, 2019 Yahoo Finance “Beto O’Rourke is rebooting his failed campaign”

August 15, 2019 WaPo by Aaron Blake “Beto O’Rourke’s…terrible message — and strategy — for Democrats”

August 15, 2019 WaPo by Jennifer Rubin “Beto O’Rourke is back — kind of”

August 15, 2019 WaPo by Jennifer Rubin “John Hickenlooper’s graceful exit sets a standard”

August 15, 2019 Time by Lissandra Villa “O’Rourke says running for Senate would not be good enough for this country”

August 15, 2019 NPR by Scott Detrow “O’Rourke resists calls to drop his White House bid and run for Senate”

August 15, 2019 WaPo by Jenna Johnson “Beto O’Rourke Restarts Presidential Campaign with a Bleak Verdict”

August 16, 2019 NYTimes by Jennifer Steinhauer “Why are these Democrats too good for the Senate?”

August 16, 2019 NPR “Will these low polling Democrats make the jump to Senate races?”

August 16, 2019 Jezebel “Beto’s failure to relaunch”

August 17, 2019 NYTimes by Matt Stevens “Hickenlooper exits as O’Rourke presses on”

August 18, 2019 WaPo by Jennifer Rubin “Distinguished pol of the week: he’s back” –the very rare positive op-ed from Rubin about O’Rourke ends with a suggestion he drop out and run for Senate

August 20, 2019 Newsweek by Nicole Goodkind “Beto O’Rourke is still polling in bottom tier of candidates after his El Paso response”

August 21, 2019 New Yorker by Eric Lach “O’Rourke’s campaign reboot feels more like an end than a beginning”

August 24, 2019 Mother Jones by Kevin Drum “Beto O’Rourke gets an F for his climate plan” nota bene: Drum has no qualifications whatsoever to decide the validity of a climate plan so Mother Jones obviously liked the takedown.

August 27, 2019 WHEN THE LEFTWING FLEW TO THE DEFENSE OF BREITBART TO ATTACK BETO O’ROURKE

August 27, 2019 6:05 pm Noah Shachtman DailyBeast reports that O’Rourke’s campaign excluded Joel Pollak of Breitbart from an event at an HBCU

August 27, 2019 6:06 pm Jonathan Swan Axios (who evidently was sitting in Shachtman’s lap) repeats the shocking news that Pollak was excluded from an O’Rourke event at an HBCU

August 28, 2019 6:31 am Josh Dawsey WaPo repeats story criticizing O’Rourke for excluding Breitbart

August 28, 2019 7:29 am Elizabeth Williamson NYTimes repeats story criticizing O’Rourke for excluding Breitbart

August 28, 2019 9:17 am Matthew Rosenberg NYTimes repeats story criticizing O’Rourke for excluding Breitbart

August 28, 2019 10:27 am Chris Hayes MSNBC repeats story criticizing O’Rourke for excluding Breitbart

Time, Seattle Times, The Globe and Mail, Politico, USAToday all repeated this story to be critical of O’Rourke and defend Breitbart

August 28, 2019 Truthout (a Bernie Sanders site) by Susie Aquilina “Beto O’Rourke built his career on driving out low-income Mexican communities” (nota bene: a total lie)

August 29, 2019 LATimes by Mark Barabak “Beto O’Rourke has chucked the presidential playbook — will it save his campaign?”

August 29, 2019 Times of Israel “O’Rourke’s campaign ejects Breitbart reporter from speech” — describing Pollak not as a purveyor of lies and hate, but as an ‘Orthodox Jewish journalist’

August 30, 2019 WaPo by Dana Milbank “Beto O’Rourke you’re needed in the Senate”

August 30, 2019 TheWeek “Beto O’Rourke eats dirt”

September 8, 2019 New York Mag by Gabriel Debenedetti “Beto O’Rourke Tries on Urgency for Size”

September 5, 2019 Politico by “Can the F-Bomb save Beto?”

September 10, 2019 FiveThirtyEight by Nate Silver “If you’re polling in the low single digits, you’re probably toast”

September 10, 2019 Politico by “Is Beto O’Rourke’s new carefree style a sign he has abandoned all hope for his candidacy?”

September 12, 2019 Politico by Nolan McCaskill and David Siders “Houston debate more wake than fete for O’Rourke and Castro”

September 12, 2019 WaPo by Ed Rogers “Ranking the Houston Democratic debaters: from Warren to Beto” (n.b. only O’Rourke got a spontaneous standing ovation from the audience)

September 13, 2019 CBSNews “Beto absolutely wrong — no ambulance shortage after mass shooting” nota bene: he was right

September 14, 2019 CNN by Holmes Lybrand “Could a President O’Rourke actually confiscate assault weapons?

September 14, 2019 HuffPost by Matthew Daly and Nicholas Riccardi “Coming for your AR-15? Beto O’Rourke Scrambles Dems’ Gun Message”

September 14, 2019 Yahoo News “Critics compare Beto O’Rourke’s gun ban to what they call a failed buyback program in Australia”

September 14, 2019 Slate “Beto O’Rourke’s pledge predictably riled up people online”

September 14, 2019 Rick Gervis in USA Today “Beto O’Rourke’s record on El Paso real estate deal has some Latinos troubled” rehashes 10 year old story about a gentrification project that never happened and was reanimated by a Bernie Sanders’ site 2 weeks before

September 15, 2019 DailyBeast by Justin Baragona “Buttigieg: I agree that Beto O’Rourke’s AR-15 remarks play into Republicans’ hands”

September 23, 2019 NYTimes by Mark Leibovich “With Beto O’Rourke on the Couldn’t Care Less Campaign Trail”

September 15, 2019 TheHill by Rebecca Klar “Buttigieg says O’Rourke is playing into GOP hands with comments on mandatory gun buybacks”

September 16, 2019 by Chris Cillizza “Can Beto swear his way to relevance”

September 17, 2019 Politico by David Siders “Mayor Pete vs. Beto: the Battle is back on”

September 17, 2019 CNN “Trump says ‘Dummy’ Beto is making gun talks harder” (nota bene: a GOP Senator blocked the Dems’ timid gun control bill for background checks as she was worried she couldn’t loan guns to her grandson)

September 18, 2019 WaPo by Jennifer Rubin “What a new Iowa poll reveals about the state of the race”

September 18, 2009 WaPo by Jennifer Rubin “The myth of the breakout”

September 18, 2019 WaPo by John Wagner “Trump says deal on guns ‘much harder’ blames Beto O’Rourke” (nota bene: a GOP Senator blocked the Dems’ timid gun control bill for background checks as she was worried she couldn’t loan guns to her grandson)

September 18, 2019 Politico by Quint Forgey “Trump blames ‘Dummy Beto’ for endangering deal on gun reform” (nota bene: a GOP Senator blocked the Dems’ timid gun control bill for background checks as she was worried she couldn’t loan guns to her grandson)

September 20, 2019 Chicago Tribune by Steve Chapman “Beto O’Rourke’s boneheaded call for confiscating guns”

September 20, 2019 Chicago Tribune “Beto O’Rourke’s demand for gun confiscation sparks feud with Chuck Schumer”

September 20, 2019 Vanity Fair by Tina Nguyen “Beto gave away the game”

September 22, 2019 TheHill by Rebecca Klar “Toomey on gun reform: Beto O’Rourke is not helping” (nota bene: a GOP Senator blocked the Dems’ timid gun control bill for background checks as she was worried she couldn’t loan guns to her grandson)

October 2, 2019 TheHill by Rebecca Klar “Booker calls out O’Rourke for criticizing gun licensing before El Paso shooting”

October 3, 2019 CNN by Eric Bradner “Beto O’Rourke escalates fight with Pete Buttigieg over guns”

October 3, 2019 BuzzFeed by Ben Smith “Beto O’Rourke called Pete Buttigieg’s comments on guns ‘offensive’ to victims of gun violence”

October 4, 2019 CNN by Chris Cillizza “Beto O’Rourke escalates fight with Pete Buttigieg”

October 4, 2019 WaPo by David Byler “Democrats are looking for electability in all the wrong places”

October 11, 2019 NBCNews by Benjy Sarlin “O’Rourke says churches against gay marriage should lose tax benefits, draws backlash” This article clearly misstates what O’Rourke said: that religious groups offering public services which discriminate against the LGBTQ community should lose tax exemption

October 11, 2019 New York Mag by Sarah Jones “Beto O’Rourke doesn’t know much about the Constitution”

October 12, 2019 The Atlantic by John Inazu “Democrats are going to regret Beto’s stance on conservative churches”

October 12, 2019 DailyBeast by Hanna Trudo “Democrats want Beto O’Rourke to stop helping Trump”

October 13, 2019 Axios by Ursula Perano “Buttigieg dismisses O’Rourke proposal to strip religious tax exemptions”

October 14, 2019 NBCNews by Quinn Gawronski “Warren, Buttigieg reject O’Rourke threat to tax anti-LGBTQ churches”

October 14, 2019 WaPo by Michael Gerson “Beto O’Rourke’s church taxation proposal would hand Trump reelection”

October 14, 2019 Slate “Beto O’Rourke is turning into a human straw man for conservatives”

October 15, 2019 Axios by Michael Sykes “Beto O’Rourke cannot fathom running for public office if he’s not 2020 nominee” — another Beto drop out and run for Senate piece

October 15, 2019 Dallas Morning News by Joshua Whitfield “Beto O’Rourke is a philosophical psychopath” Whitfield is a Roman Catholic priest not a psychiatrist — extraordinarily vicious piece displaying why the Catholic church should be paying taxes

October 15, 2019 CNN by Kate Sullivan “Buttigieg to Beto: I don’t need lessons from you on courage”

October 15, 2019 Politico by David Siders “Beto O’Rourke’s campaign found new meaning in the gun debate but is he hurting the cause?”

October 15, 2019 Fast Company by Christopher Zara “Beto O’Rourke used a loaded adjective to describe Elizabeth Warren and it didn’t go over well” O’Rourke described her plan as ‘punitive’

October 15, 2019 CNN by Alison Camerota “Beto O’Rourke struggles to describe specifics on gun buyback”

October 16, 2019 DailyBeast by Lachlan Markay “Pete Buttigieg swats down Beto O’Rourke on guns”

October 16, 2019 New York Mag by Eric Levitz “Beto O’Rourke 2020 has been worse than useless”

October 16, 2019 Bloomberg by Michael Strain “Beto O’Rourke’s Bad Idea to Punish Conservative Churches”

October 17, 2019 Vox by Jane Coaston “How Beto O’Rourke became a conservative boogeyman — he’s flailing with Democratic primary voters but terrifying conservatives”

October 21, 2019 Axios by Rebecca Falconer “O’Rourke says Trump’s rhetoric is ‘perhaps inspired by’ Nazi Goebbels

October 21, 2019 CNN by Josh Feldman “Wolf Blitzer presses Beto O’Rourke on Trump-Nazi Germany Comparison: Is that not going too far?”

October 24, 2019 Vice by Zeeshan Aleem “Beto O’Rourke isn’t a viable candidate, he’s just trying to go viral”

October 24, 2019 WaPo by Paul Waldman “Another Democrat just dropped out”

October 25, 2019 Jewish Journal by Ari Feldman “Beto won’t stop making Nazi analogies. Why aren’t Jews made like they were at AOC?”

October 26, 2019 Yahoo News “Johnny Joey Jones says Beto O’Rourke is ignorant on guns”

October 27, 2019 Fort Worth Star-Telegram “Beto O’Rourke shows us that Democrats hate Christianity”

October 29, 2019 WaPo by David Von Drehle “Trump without Trumpiness would win reelection in a landslide”

November 1, 2019 Esquire by Charles Pierce “I was never sure if Beto O’Rourke was running as a real person or a Bobby Kennedy replicant”

November 1, 2019 WaPo by Matt Viser and Jenna Johnson “Beto O’Rourke quits presidential race amid financial strains and lagging popularity”

November 1, 2019 WaPo by Jennifer Rubin “What we can learn from Beto O’Rourke”

November 1, 2019 Jacobin by Luke Savage “Beto’s Fifteen Minutes are over and not a moment too soon”

November 2, 2019 NYTimes by Matt Flegenheimer “The end of Betomania”

November 2, 2019 Axios by Fadel Allassan “The factors behind Beto O’Rourke’s failed campaign”

November 2, 2019 Politico by David Siders “Inside Beto O’Rourke’s collapse”

November 2, 2019 DailyBeast by Margaret Carlson “Beto O’Rourke came in with a bang but left with a whimper” n.b. Carlson, a 74 year old pundit, previously attacked O’Rourke casting sexual aspersions on him.

November 2, 2019 Guardian by Nathan Robinson “Goodbye, Beto O’Rourke. What a sad end to a pointless campaign” (Robinson’s a Sanders supporter — seems like the Guardian has turned into a vanity publication for Bernie Sanders)

November 2, 2019 DailyBeast by Hanna Trudo “Beto O’Rourke drops out of 2020 race”

November 4, 2019 CNN by Eric Bradner “Why Betomania didn’t translate to the national stage”

November 4, 2019 TheAtlantic by Edward-Isaac Dovere “Odyssey’s End: Beto’s Presidential road trip runs out of gas

AND THE MEDIA HARASSMENT CONTINUES…..

December 5, 2019 New York Times by Gail Collins who gets in one last (?) dig at Beto O’Rourke

December 5, 2019 WaPo by Pat Myers “The Old (crystal) ball game” one last (?) dig — surely not: the WaPo has a cottage industry in BetoBashers

December 6, 2019 NYTimes (they just can’t quit bashing Beto!) by Jamelle Bouie “Why the ‘Wokest’ Candidates Are the Weakest”

December 6, 2019 Politico by Burgess Everett “Dems woo Bullock for the Senate. They’re over Beto.” Burgess quotes Joe Manchin as an example of a Democrat in the Senate critical of Beto. This is not a joke.

December 8, 2019 NYTimes by Frank Bruni “Democrats’ 2020 Mess”

December 10, 2019 DailyBeast by Matt Lewis “How sane and normal Democrats are taking back the party” more Beto Bashing from this rightwing Republican pundit pushing Buttigieg

December 11, 2019 DailyBeast by Matt Lewis — Lewis retweets an old article to continue the DailyBeast’s BetoBashing cottage industry

December 14, 2019 WaPo The Ranking Committee lists their idea of most likely VP candidates, naturally no mention of Beto O’Rourke’s name but a full list of politicians no one has ever heard of …LOL

December 19, 2019 Slate by Christina Cauterucci “We should have seen Beto’s defeat beard coming all along”

December 26, 2019 Politico by Bill Scher “The 2019 Presidential Campaign Dropouts, Ranked”

December 29, 2019 Politico by Bill Scher — he retweets his previous biased article with the title that Beto has “incinerated his career in Texas” — as if Scher would know anything about Texas!

January 9, 2020 WaPo by Helaine Olen “For Gen X women middle age is exhausting” (this is Beto O’Rourke’s fault?)