Perhaps the most endearing, if not oft-repeated fact about Beto O’Rourke, the former Texas congressman and one-time presidential candidate, is that he had a pretty deep punk phase. As a teenager, the El Paso native played drums in a band called Foss, a post-hardcore outfit that also featured At the Drive-In and Mars Volta frontman Cedric Bixler-Zavala.
O’Rourke loves talking about his punk past, but on Monday he started pushing a new agenda by endorsing Joe Biden for president. This did not sit well with his old Foss bandmate Bixler-Zavala, who, unlike O’Rourke, is still pretty punk. On Instagram last night, immediately after O’Rourke’s appearance with Biden, the singer posted a picture of Bernie Sanders with the caption “Bernie Sanders All The Fucking Way!!” and wrote, “No thank you Biden.”
While that just seems like some subtle O’Rourke shade, things got more interesting once Bixler-Zavala started replying to fans’ comments. User @TheCatPalace wrote, “Beto really bummed me out bad by supporting Biden” and Bixler-Zavala responded, “me too.” When another commenter asked Bixler-Zavala to denounce O’Rourke’s endorsement, he wrote back: “denounced in the comatorium.” The whole thread is worth reading for Bixler-Zavala’s dedication to posting and his admission that he couldn’t convince O’Rourke to vote for Bernie because he can’t offer him anything the DNC can. There you have it.
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