A ghoulish Stephenie Ruhle on Tuesday promoted the idea that 2020 Democrat Beto O’Rourke could use the mass slaughter in El Paso this past weekend as a way to gain “momentum” for his floundering presidential campaign.

She wondered, “Beto has said he is running in the name of decency and democracy. As bad as this may sound, could this moment be a chance for Beto to gain some momentum?”

Yes, Stephanie, it does sound bad. Very bad and highly inappropriate.

Ruhle cheered on efforts to exploit the tragedy: “Beto O’Rourke, who is from El Paso, has been very forceful. He dropped an f-bomb with reporters yesterday.”

Too bad for guest Maria Kumar that she wasn't at least alerted when Ruhle gave the warning of "as bad as this may sound." Instead of declining to be pulled into Ruhle's highly inappropriate political fantasies, she just joined right in.

MARIA KUMAR: I think so. I mean, when you look at who the president is most afraid of, you often hear within inner circles that Beto is the one that concerns him. And it’s not only because he was able to capture the imagination of progressive Texas, he got over 500,000 Republicans to vote for him and he got a lot of independents to vote for him. Let’s not forget Obama lost Texas by 16 points, four years later Hillary lost 9 and two years later Beto lost by a merely two. And it's significant because right now Arizona just went purple. That's 11 electoral votes. Texas has 38 electoral votes.

Talk about never letting a tragedy go to waste.

Here's a fuller version of Ruhle's comments: