The Republican mayor of El Paso, Texas, said that President Donald Trump mocked him as a fake Republican last week during his visit to the border city following a deadly mass shooting there.
Dee Margo told PBS' "Frontline" in an interview - excerpts of which were published Wednesday - that Trump called him a RINO, a derisive moniker meaning "Republican in Name Only," when the two met after the president visited hospital staff and shooting survivors. The shooting, which targeted Latino immigrants, left 22 people dead and dozens injured earlier this month.
According to Margo, Trump was still steaming over a back-and-forth they had in February over his long-promised wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
“He said, ‘You’re a RINO,’ and I said, ‘No sir, I’m not a RINO, I simply corrected the misinformation you were given by our attorney general, and that’s all I did’,” Margo told "Frontline," adding that the president grinned when the mayor pushed back against the nickname.
RINO is often used by Republicans to disparage others within the party who are not sufficiently conservative.
Trump sharply criticized the mayor in February during an El Paso campaign rally, saying Margo and others were "full of crap" for saying portions of the wall built nearby did not reduce crime in the city.
