Dem lawmaker rips O’Rourke: ‘I don’t think losing is cool’

Rep. Max Rose (D-N.Y.) sharply criticized former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) in an interview published Friday, accusing the former congressman of turning a losing Senate bid into social media stardom.

In an interview published in New York magazine’s “Intelligencer,” Rose lashed out at O’Rourke after the Texas Democrat criticized members of the party who do not support bold action on gun control and other issues. O’Rourke is a supporter of a federally mandated buyback of assault weapons.

{mosads}“I don’t think losing is cool. I want the Democratic Party to be the party of Kyrsten Sinema and not the party of Beto O’Rourke,” Rose said, referring to the first-term Arizona senator.

“Losing is not as cool as he thinks it is,” the Staten Island congressman added to the magazine.

“When you win you get to help people, and when you lose you get to be a social-media rock star,” Rose said. “So I don’t think Beto is cool, and I don’t think losing is cool. If we don’t win, we can’t do a f—ing thing for anybody in a union, anybody in public housing, anybody that can’t reunite with their family because of a f—ing racist Muslim ban.”

Rose’s comments are by far the sharpest public blowback to O’Rourke’s pressure on Democrats to support a federally mandated assault weapons buyback, a position O’Rourke focused his campaign on after a deadly mass shooting in El Paso, his hometown, in August.

O’Rourke left Congress after losing a bid against Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) last year and subsequently announced a run for the presidency, though his campaign has failed to break into the top tier of contenders.

Rose, who represents a district won by President Trump in 2016, came out in public support of an impeachment inquiry into the president following the publication of details about Trump’s efforts to persuade Ukraine’s president to launch a criminal investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden while delaying military aid to the nation.

His support of the inquiry, among other centrist Democratic lawmakers representing seats won by Democrats from Republicans in the midterms, is credited with swaying the opinion of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in favor of an impeachment probe.