--- title: El Paso Mayor Says Trump Called Him a RINO During Visit to Shooting Victims description: El Paso Mayor Dee Margo said Donald Trump criticized him during the President's visit to the Texas city in the wake of the mass shooting. canonical: https://time.com/5653918/trump-attack-el-paso-mayor/ author: Billy Perrigo article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2019-08-16T16:53:34.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-13T08:56:49.779Z article:section: Politics og:title: El Paso Mayor Says Trump Called Him a RINO During Visit to Comfort Shooting Victims og:description: RINO––Republican in Name Only––has become a derisive term for Trump supporters og:url: https://time.com/5653918/trump-attack-el-paso-mayor/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt28d0b44d7b548c7f/698a0184011682576097e11d/trump-el-paso-mayor.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: US-POLITICS-CRIME-SHOOTING-TRUMP og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: El Paso Mayor Says Trump Called Him a RINO During Visit to Comfort Shooting Victims twitter:description: RINO––Republican in Name Only––has become a derisive term for Trump supporters twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt28d0b44d7b548c7f/698a0184011682576097e11d/trump-el-paso-mayor.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # El Paso Mayor Says President Trump Called Him a RINO During Visit to Comfort Shooting Victims > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=b4c7f829-3328-44d6-8263-f15ff0a787d5&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: As Trump Visits El Paso to Sell His Wall, The Mayor Refutes Trump's False Claims About The City [Watch (HLS stream): As Trump Visits El Paso to Sell His Wall, The Mayor Refutes Trump's False Claims About The City](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/B8MLhMA4.m3u8) (0:51)  _Published 2019-02-11. Trump is visiting El Paso on Monday for his first rally of 2019 – as he continues to try to rally support for the wall_  by [Billy Perrigo](https://time.com/author/billy-perrigo/)  ## Billy Perrigo Correspondent Aug 16, 2019 4:53 PM UTC Still reeling after two mass shootings in early August resulted in 31 deaths in two states over a span of less than 24 hours, the U.S. has been rocked by another gun rampage in West Texas that left 7 people dead and many more injured  by [Billy Perrigo](https://time.com/author/billy-perrigo/)  ## Billy Perrigo Correspondent Aug 16, 2019 4:53 PM UTC El Paso’s Republican mayor said Donald Trump criticized him during the President’s visit to the Texas city last week in the wake of the [mass shooting](https://time.com/5643420/victims-el-paso-shooting/) that killed 22 people. Mayor Dee Margo said he told Trump he was spreading “misinformation” about crime in the border town. Margo made the comments to [PBS’s _Frontline_](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/in-private-meeting-trump-calls-el-paso-mayor-a-rino/) in an interview published Wednesday, exactly a week after he met with the President. Trump responded with a political attack. “He said, ‘You’re a RINO’ and I said, ‘No, sir. I am not a RINO,’” Margo said. RINO –– Republican in Name Only –– has long been a term associated with liberal Republicans, but lately it has also become a derisive term that many Trump supporters use to describe Republicans who criticize or refuse to support the President. Margo continued, “I said, ‘I simply corrected the misinformation you were given by \[the Texas\] Attorney General. That’s all I did … He just kinda grinned.” The “misinformation” Margo is referring to was the false claim made by [Trump in his February State of the Union address](https://time.com/5522904/donald-trump-el-paso-wall/) that El Paso’s crime rate was one of the highest in the U.S. until a barrier fence was erected in 2009. Margo said the border fence had no “direct impact” on El Paso’s overall crime rate. “We are one of the safest cities in the country, but we have been before the fence went up,” he told _Frontline_. There were just [19](https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/tables/table-8/table-8-state-cuts/texas.xls) murders or non-negligent manslaughters known to law enforcement in El Paso in 2017, according to the FBI. In Washington D.C., which has a similar population, there were [116](https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/tables/table-8/table-8-state-cuts/district-of-columbia.xls). Trump’s language on migration and violent crime has been linked by many in civil society to the El Paso shooting, which was carried out by an [alleged white supremacist](https://time.com/5648920/el-paso-shooting-confessed/) who wrote of an “invasion” of Hispanic people. “The President’s open racism is an invitation to violence,” the former El Paso Congressman and 2020 Presidential candidate [Beto O’Rourke](https://time.com/5649332/beto-orourke-el-paso-shooting/) said after the shooting. “The writing has been on the wall since his maiden speech coming down the escalator calling immigrants ‘rapists and criminals’.” “The action that follows cannot surprise us.” ## Transcript [00:00] The [ UNKNOWN ] remarks were he was echoing what [00:03] had been said by our attorney general a few weeks [00:05] ago in [ UNKNOWN ], that was wrong. If people have [00:08] contacted me about our attorney general's remarks, I [00:11] would have corrected it at that time as well. We were [00:13] going back to [ UNKNOWN ] 2005, one of the safest [00:16] cities in the nation The barrier went up and the [00:20] fence went up and it's only about ten miles long and [00:24] the total fencing in the El Paso sectors are about [00:27] seventy eight miles and it's not continuous. Now, it's [00:31] part of the process for border security but it's not a [00:34] total panacea. But the remarks that the President [00:38] made in the State of the Union were stated [00:42] originally, almost verbatim, by our Attorney General [00:46] some weeks ago, and that's what's where the [00:48] erroneous comments came from that were not correct. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5653918/trump-attack-el-paso-mayor/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5653918/trump-attack-el-paso-mayor/"},"headline":"El Paso Mayor Says President Trump Called Him a RINO During Visit to Comfort Shooting Victims","datePublished":"2019-08-16T16:53:34.000Z","dateModified":"2026-10-13T08:56:49.779Z","description":"RINO––Republican in Name Only––has become a derisive term for Trump supporters","url":"https://time.com/5653918/trump-attack-el-paso-mayor/","keywords":["Donald Trump","Texas","onetime"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt28d0b44d7b548c7f/698a0184011682576097e11d/trump-el-paso-mayor.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Billy Perrigo","jobTitle":"Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/billy-perrigo/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt28d0b44d7b548c7f/698a0184011682576097e11d/trump-el-paso-mayor.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"US-POLITICS-CRIME-SHOOTING-TRUMP","caption":"US-POLITICS-CRIME-SHOOTING-TRUMP","creditText":"SAUL LOEB—AFP/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/tag/donald-trump/","name":"Donald Trump"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/5653918/trump-attack-el-paso-mayor/","name":"El Paso Mayor Says President Trump Called Him a RINO During Visit to Comfort Shooting Victims"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"69 People Have Been Killed in Mass Shootings in 2019 Alone","description":"Still reeling after two mass shootings in early August resulted in 31 deaths in two states over a span of less than 24 hours, the U.S. has been rocked by another gun rampage in West Texas that left 7 people dead and many more injured","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/DfbXzH5L/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2019-08-05T16:20:34.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/DfbXzH5L.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/5653918/trump-attack-el-paso-mayor/","duration":"PT2M1S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/5653918/trump-attack-el-paso-mayor/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"As Trump Visits El Paso to Sell His Wall, The Mayor Refutes Trump's False Claims About The City","description":"Trump is visiting El Paso on Monday for his first rally of 2019 – as he continues to try to rally support for the wall","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/B8MLhMA4/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2019-02-11T17:32:27.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/B8MLhMA4.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/5653918/trump-attack-el-paso-mayor/","duration":"PT51S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/5653918/trump-attack-el-paso-mayor/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```