Beto O'Rourke Speaking Spanish

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About

Beto O'Rourke Speaking Spanish refers to a series of jokes and memes about Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke speaking Spanish at the first presidential debate. In addition to jokes about his Spanish-language comments, some mocked the facial expression of opposing candidate Cory Booker watching O'Rourke speak.

Origin

On June 26th, 2019, MSNBC^[1] aired the First Democratic Debate, which featured the first 10 of 20 Democratic candidates hoping to win the Democratic Party's nomination for the presidential candidate in the 2020 election. At the onset of the debate, moderator Savannah Guthrie asked O'Rourke about the economy. The candidate answered in both English and Spanish.

That evening, MSNBC tweeted the response, received more than 10,000 likes, 2,000 retweets and 1,000 comments in 24 hours (shown below).

WATCH: Beto O'Rourke delivers his first #DemDebate response in English and Spanish. pic.twitter.com/xxZSvvYTyq

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) June 27, 2019

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Following O'Rourke's comments, people on Twitter began mocking his answer. Twitter^[2] user @TomNamako tweeted,^[2] "Beto just spoke 2 languages to avoid directly answering a question." Within 24 hours, the tweet received more than 21,000 likes and 3,000 retweets (shown below).

Throughout the evening, people continued to mock O'Rourke's use of Spanish. These jokes mostly invoked the criticism that the candidate did not properly answer the question he was asked, choosing instead to deflect by speaking Spanish (examples below).

Others mocked Cory Booker's facial reaction to O'Rourke's responding. Standing wide-eyed and mouth agape, Booker, as many noted had the expression of someone who was both shocked and angry by the response. Twitter^[3] user @andizeisler tweeted, "omg Booker’s face when Beto busted out the Spanish." The post received more than 22,000 likes and 3,400 retweets in 24 hours (shown below, left).

Booker's response soon shaped into a reaction image that expressed being shocked by someone's comments (examples below, center and right).

Some commented that Booker looked surprised because he would later speak Spanish at the debate, leaving some to theorize that O'Rourke had beaten him to it (shown below).

Cory Booker also answers a question in Spanish while debating the issue of immigration during the #DemDebate https://t.co/ewYqXS8Vqc pic.twitter.com/swYH1Emddr

— Hollywood Reporter (@THR) June 27, 2019

Twitter^[10] user @jason_howerton mocked the candidates' responses. They wrote, BETO: I speak Spanish. BOOKER: I can't believe you did my thing before me. DE BLASIO: I have a black son. BOOKER: I'm actually black tho, Bill. KLOBUCHAR: …Um, I have an uncle with a deer stand? WARREN: *don't say it, don't say it*." The post received more than 97,000 likes and 21,000 retweets in 24 hours (shown below).
They later tweeted a video comparison to his tweet (shown below).

Oh, y'all thought I was just making a meme?!?!?! Here it is in its glorious video form: pic.twitter.com/rdjSi7kbbY

— Jason Howerton (@jason_howerton) June 27, 2019

That evening, Twitter^[4] published a Moments page on the reaction to O'Rourke's response.

Several media outlets commented the memes, as well, including Uproxx,^[5] The Hill,^[6] People,^[7] Yahoo,^[8] New York^[9] and more