What did Beto O’Rourke call people who support building a border wall?

During a weekend stop in South Texas, U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke of El Paso received a roaring round of applause after making his thoughts clear on people who support President Donald Trump’s plans to build a wall on the U.S-Mexico border.

“If we allow this to stand, if we allow walls to be built, if we allow those kids to go un-reunited with their parents, they will be asking themselves, ‘who were those pendejos?,’” O’Rourke said as the crowd at the Social Club in Edinburg roared in support.

The message particularly resonated in Edinburg, a border city where 89 percent of the population identifies as Hispanic. The word, which is a curse word in Spanish, can mean “dumb---” or stupid.

A video clip of O’Rourke’s speech was first tweeted out Sunday afternoon and first reported on by Remezcla on Monday morning. The original tweet has gotten more than 8,500 retweets and 20,000 likes.

This is not the first time that O’Rourke, a Democrat challenging Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz for the Senate seat, has used the word to encourage civic action. He was quoted using it in the San Antonio Express-News in February 2018 and in GQ in August 2018.

He said it at a Beers With Beto event in Fort Worth in February as well.

“If we do this in 2018, in a year of record safety and security on our border with Mexico, what will students read 50 years from now?” O’Rourke said, according to the Fort Worth Weekly. “If they read that we built this wall, they will be asking themselves, ‘Who were those pendejos?’ ”

This story was originally published September 25, 2018 at 4:48 PM.