“We cannot do it by half measure with half the country; this cannot be one president or one party — it has to be all of us,” he said.

“The fact is that we are all Americans first before anything else is all that matters in this moment,” he said.

When asked by a UVa student on the balance between free speech and hate speech in the wake of white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, O’Rourke focused his response on President Donald Trump’s rhetoric.

“Nazis, Klansmen, white supremacists are, in his words, very fine people,” O’Rourke said, in reference to Trump’s speech following the rally where he said there were “very fine people on both sides.”

In order to address racism, some systemic and long-standing problems would need to be fixed, he said.

O’Rourke later exited Nau Hall to a staircase, cheered on by hundreds of students peering down from the balconies. His second speech covered similar territory but also touched on “crippling” student debt. In addition, he addressed his recent loss to Cruz.