Former Texas Congressman and presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke blasted Republican leaders in Texas who have chosen to focus on culture wars rather than the real problems facing Texans amid rolling blackouts that have lasted days because of a failed energy grid.
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Said O’Rourke to Chris Hayes: “It’s worse than you are hearing. …. So much of this was avoidable. Going back to the deregulation of our electricity grid here in Texas, which has actually created an incentive to actually not weatherize or protect against these events so that some of your plants can be shut down and you can profit from the spiking prices for energy and electricity. And then you have the cascading consequences of these stupid culture battles that are led by the GOP and our governor Greg Abbott who is focusing on making Texas a sanctuary state for the NRA, or they’re arguing with the Mavericks about playing ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ at the beginning of their games, or bathroom bills, or other kinds of stupidity while we have very real emergencies like a pandemic that has killed more than 40,000 of our fellow Texans.
“The energy capital of North America cannot provide enough energy to warm and power people’s homes,” O’Rourke continued. “We are nearing a failed state in Texas. And it has nothing to do with God or natural disasters. It has everything to do with those in positions of public trust who have failed us.”
