Abbott Blasts Mayor Who's Veteran Cop
Despite Pledge to Always Back the Blue

Capitol Inside
August 10, 2022

Democrat Beto O'Rourke filled a charter school gym in Cleburne with hundreds of cheering supporters on Wednesday as Governor Greg Abbott escalated a war of words on immigration with a veteran police officer who leads the nation's largest city while vowing that Texas would forever "#BackTheBlue" in a Twitter post.

While Abbott continued to avoid the traditional campaign trail, he scored headlines in the far right media with a line from the Dirty Harry movie Sudden Impact in response to New York City Mayor Eric Adams' threat the day before to send buses of people to Texas to campaign against the incumbent governor.

“I kind of feel like Clint Eastwood — go ahead, mayor, make my day,” Abbott said in an interview on Fox News.

O'Rourke took his traveling Texas salvation show to Mineral Wells early this evening after wooing voters in the Johnson County seat at the Kauffman Leadership Academy gymnasium where his campaign estimated the crowd to be at 800 after receiving 500 RSPVs.

O'Rourke planned stops on Thursday in Decatur and Fort Worth as he neared the midway point of a 5,600 mile Drive Across Texas - with Tarrant County one of the few destinations on the tour where he beat U.S. Senator Ted Cruz in the race at the top of the ticket in 2018.

Abbott continued in the meantime to avoid the traditional campaign trail while promoting his work as governor and candidacy on social media instead. The governor gave his border security program Operation Lone Star a plug late Wednesday morning with a tweet on a smuggling attempt that was foiled by Texas military forces at the Rio Grande.

The governor provided a photograph as evidence that shows two people crossing the river under the watchful eye of a law enforcement officer on a ledge on the opposite shore. Both of the subjects in the Operation Lone Star photo appear to be males - and one is carrying something that appears to be the size of an infant wrapped in a blanket but is indiscernible in the image that only shows their backs.

"Texas National Guard troops identify two potential smugglers in the Rio Grande River, forcing them to turn back to Mexico," Abbott tweeted. "The Lone Star State continues to secure our border & keep Texans safe in the federal government's absence."

Abbott declined to speculate on whether the men might have been trafficking drugs like fentanyl that they would will have another opportunity to bring into Texas after being turned away from the north shore by the Texas Guard who would have been able to apprehend them if they'd chosen to enter the U.S. here instead of wading back to Mexico.

Abbott used a subsequent Twitter post to rebuke the most stinging criticism yet from New York Mayor Eric Adams as three more buses loaded with migrants dropped them off there today.

Abbott "is an anti-American governor that is really going against everything we stand for,” Adams said a press conference in the Jamaica community in Queens. “He is a global embarrassment. Because this is not what we do as Americans.”

The governor channeled an intensified attack on his patriotism and character into a slap at the White House. "Mayor Adams has no idea what Texas deals with every day at our southern border," Abbot said on Fox News. "Despite its sanctuary city policy, NYC can't handle even a fraction of the chaos Biden has created. This should be a wake-up call to the Biden administration to do its job & secure the border."

Abbott set himself up for a new round of criticism on his handling of a mass school shooting in Uvalde when he celebrated the anniversary of the Department of Public Safety's conception.

"The Texas Department of Public Safety was founded on this day in 1935," Abbott said in a Twitter salute.
"Thank you to our brave @TxDPS officers for protecting the Lone Star State at the border, on the roads, & in our communities. Texas will always #BackTheBlue."

The show of affection for the state police appeared to be a risky move in light of a furor over the fact that the DPS had 91 officers at Robb Elementary in Uvalde where none sought to confront a teenage gunman who murdered 19 children and two students. The Uvalde massacre represents the worst episode for the DPS in its long and storied history. But Abbott has chosen to look the other way after falsely portraying the law enforcement response as heroic at a news conference on the day after the killings.

more to come ...