Republican El Paso Mayor Dee Margo said on Wednesday that President Donald Trump called him a “RINO” (Republican In Name Only) during Trump’s visit to the city that was reeling from a mass shooting.
During an interview on the PBS program “Frontline,” Margo told reporter Martin Smith that he and the President had something of a tense conversation when the mayor accompanied Trump on his drive back to the city airport.
According to Margo, it started when Trump brought up their previous disagreement over El Paso’s crime rate and the effectiveness of the border wall, which had led to Trump saying Margo was “full of crap” during a February rally in El Paso.
“He said, ‘You’re a RINO,’ and I said, ‘No, sir. I’m not a RINO,'” Margo told Smith. “I said, ‘I simply corrected the misinformation you were given by the attorney general, and that’s all I did.'”
“What did he say?” the reporter asked.
“He just kind of grinned,” Margo replied.
That wasn’t Trump’s only dig at a leader dealing with a shooting massacre in their community; the President also took several jabs at Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley (D) and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) after he visited Dayton in response to the shooting in the Ohio city.