white house Inside El Paso hospital, Trump talked crowd sizes and 'crazy Beto'

President Donald Trump on Wednesday ridiculed former Rep. Beto O’Rourke and bragged about the crowd size at one of his rallies while visiting medical staff who treated victims of the mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, over the weekend.

“So, I don’t know if you know it because you’ve been pretty busy lately, right? But they’re talking about you all over the world,” Trump told hospital employees during a stop at University Medical Center of El Paso, according to a video posted online by a local television station.


“The job you’ve done is incredible, and they’re talking about you all over the world,” Trump continued, before turning to praise the doctor who introduced him to the staff.

“It’s an honor to be with you. Look at this group of people, can you believe this? I was here three months ago, we made a speech,” Trump said. “And we had a — what was the name of the arena? That place was packed, right?”

Trump last traveled to El Paso to host a campaign rally in February. O’Rourke, a Texas Democrat who until earlier this year represented the vast majority of El Paso in Congress, held a competing rally in the Southwestern border town that night, railing against the administration’s immigration agenda and the president’s proposal to build a wall separating the U.S. and Mexico.

When one of the hospital employees Trump was addressing Wednesday said he had sat in the front row of the “Make America Great Again” rally earlier this year, the president reached out to shake his hand.

“That was some crowd, and we had twice the number outside,” Trump replied. “And then you had this crazy Beto. Beto had, like, 400 people in a parking lot. They said, ‘His crowd was wonderful.’”

The employee then pulled up one of his pants legs to show the president a sock emblazoned with the word “Trump.”

POLITICO Playbook newsletter Sign up today to receive the #1-rated newsletter in politics Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

“Don't tell it to the press because they won’t even believe it,” Trump remarked, appearing to pantomime reporters’ reactions to the result of the 2016 presidential election.

“On the day of the vote, they say, ‘What happened, what happened?’” Trump said. “I want to thank everybody. How do we get some kind of a picture here?”

The El Paso Fire Department has denied the president’s claims regarding the number of people at his February rally, and the Trump campaign has yet to reimburse the city roughly a half-million dollars for the cost of the event.

National Democrats have linked Trump’s immigration rhetoric to the suspected gunman in the El Paso shooting, a 21-year-old white man who is alleged to have authored and posted online a racist, anti-Hispanic manifesto before murdering 22 people at a Walmart on Saturday morning.

On Sunday morning, within 13 hours of that attack, a gunman in Dayton, Ohio, murdered nine people before he was shot and killed by police. The attacks left dozens more injured.

Trump made trips to both communities Wednesday to speak with first responders, law enforcement officers and victims. O’Rourke was among a handful of Democrats who urged the president to stay away from El Paso.

“Beto (phony name to indicate Hispanic heritage) O’Rourke, who is embarrassed by my last visit to the Great State of Texas, where I trounced him, and is now even more embarrassed by polling at 1% in the Democrat Primary, should respect the victims & law enforcement - & be quiet!” Trump tweeted Tuesday night.

O’Rourke responded early Wednesday morning, tweeting : “22 people in my hometown are dead after an act of terror inspired by your racism. El Paso will not be quiet and neither will I.” He later in the day declared Trump a white supremacist and predicted an act of violence similar to the one perpetrated in El Paso “will happen again.”

