El Paso, Texas, Mayor Dee Margo said in a recent interview that President Trump told him, “you’re a RINO,” during his recent visit after the deadly Walmart shooting.
Margo detailed when the president called him a “Republican in name only” while discussing Trump’s recent visit to El Paso on PBS’ Frontline. “I said, ‘If you want to deal with immigration, the first thing you do is you have Homeland Security define what is a secure border and what they need in the way of resources to handle that,'” Margo said of his conversation with Trump.
Amid a back-and-forth over the efficacy of border walls, Margo then alleges that the president called him a “RINO.”
“I said, ‘No, sir. I am not a RINO,'” Margo remembered. “I simply corrected the misinformation you were given by [the Texas] attorney general, and that’s all I did.”
Margo also claims he took issue with Trump’s February assertion during his State of the Union address that El Paso was one of the most dangerous cities in the country before the border fence was constructed. “We are one of the safest cities in the country,” Margo said. “But we have been before the fence went up. It had a dramatic impact on petty crimes and automobile thefts … So it has benefited, but it had no direct impact on our overall crime rate.”
Margo also penned an article for USA Today in February criticizing Trump’s remarks about El Paso. “We in El Paso, Texas, are a community that transcends the border,” he wrote. “While some are concerned about our proximity to Mexico, we choose to celebrate it. While others embrace building a wall, we remind them a fence already exists.”
