Ted Cruz Just Joked About Locking Up Beto O’Rourke

Seriously.

Eric Gay/Associated Press

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At a get-out-the-vote event on Tuesday, Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz joked that his Democratic challenger, Rep. Beto O’Rourke, should be thrown in jail with Hillary Clinton. Cruz made his remarks at a rally in Georgetown, Texas, one day after he joined President Donald Trump for a rally at an arena in Houston.

After Cruz attacked O’Rourke for opposing funding for Israel’s “Iron Dome” missile defense project—a standard part of his stump speech—a woman in the audience shouted, “Lock him up!”

“Well, you know, there’s a double-occupancy cell with Hillary Clinton,” Cruz responded, while the audience applauded.

“Y’all are gonna get me in trouble with that,” he continued. “They’re not gonna cover anything about taxes or anything else, that’s gonna be the entire news broadcast.”

Cruz told voters last week that he is running to restore “civility and respect” to politics.

Watch it here:

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

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