Beto O’Rourke breaks into Spanish during the Democratic debate, and Twitter loses its mind

Within the first few minutes of the first Democratic debate, candidate Beto O’Rourke certainly got a lot of viewers’ attention.

When O’Rourke was asked if he supported a marginal individual tax rate of 70% on those making more than $10 million a year, his first question of the night, he decided to do something different.

He answered the question. Then he answered again in Spanish.

Later in the debate, moderator José Díaz-Balart asked O’Rourke about immigration in Spanish — also a first.

The question was about the now-infamous picture of a father and daughter drowning in the Rio Grande while trying to migrate.

With both of these responses, O’Rourke shot up to the second-highest trending topic on Twitter in America. More than 50,000 people were tweeting about their shock of O’Rourke’s ability to speak Spanish and Corey Booker’s reaction to it.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump had his own reaction.

This story was originally published June 26, 2019 at 10:01 PM.