Beto O’Rourke issued the first two apologies of his campaign on Friday: one for joking about “sometimes” helping his wife raise their three children and another for the violent fiction he wrote as a teenager.
O’Rourke, who announced this week he would run for president in 2020, joked at multiple campaign stops that his wife Amy is raising their children — Ulysses, 12; Molly, 11; and Henry, 8 — “sometimes with my help.” The remark was swiftly criticized by those who argued female candidates couldn’t make similar comments about their involvement as a parent.
“Not only will I not say that again, but I’ll be more thoughtful going forward in the way that I talk about our marriage,” he said late Friday night during the Political Party Live podcast in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
He said the criticism of his “ham-handed” attempt to highlight his wife’s work with their children was “right on.”
Additionally, O’Rourke said he isn’t proud of the disturbing fiction he wrote when he was about 15 that detailed the murder of children. The writing was unearthed Friday in a Reuters report explaining that O’Rourke was a member of a computer hacking group called the Cult of the Dead Cow and authored a series of writings under the name “Psychedelic Warlord.”
“I’m mortified to read it now, incredibly embarrassed, but I have to take ownership of my words,” he said. “Whatever my intention was as a teenager doesn’t matter, I have to look long and hard at my actions, at the language I have used, and I have to constantly try to do better.”
“It’s not anything I’m proud of today, and I mean, that’s the long and short of it,” he told reporters earlier on Friday. “All I can do is my best, which is what I’m trying to do. I can’t control anything I’ve done in the past. I can only control what I do going forward and what I plan to do is give this my best.”
O’Rourke, a former congressman from Texas, unsuccessfully went head to head with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, during the 2018 midterm elections. He is now competing for the Democratic nomination for president against a crowded field of candidates, including Sens. Kamala Harris of California, Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, among others.
