Beto O'Rourke changes his tune on potential 2020 run — here's what he's saying now

Leading up to Election Day, Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-Texas) definitively said he would not be a presidential candidate in 2020. As of Monday, however, things apparently had changed, according to The Hill.

Even though O'Rourke lost the Senate race against incumbent and 2016 Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, his nationally popular campaign and relatively close margin of defeat led to calls from some on the left for O'Rourke to put his name into the already-crowded 2020 Democratic field.

"Amy and I made a decision not to rule anything out," O'Rourke said after an El Paso town hall, according to The Washington Post.

What he said before: During an interview on 60 Minutes days before the election, O'Rourke said he wouldn't run for president in 2020 no matter what happened Nov. 6.

Jon Wertheim: We've heard a lot of people speculate that you and Sen. Cruz may face each other again, not in a Senate rematch but running for a higher office. What are your thoughts on — on running for president?

Beto O'Rourke: I don't wanna do it. I will not do it. Amy and I are raising an 11-year-old, a 10-year-old and a 7-year-old. And we spent the better part of two years not with each other, missing birthdays and anniversaries and time together. And we — our family could not survive more of that. We, we need to be together."

Wertheim: Is that reversible? You're saying you'll, you'll never run for president?

O'Rourke: Win or lose, I'm not — I'm not running in, in 2020. I gotta tell you, it's incredibly flattering that anyone would ask me the question or that that's even up for discussion. But, but since people have asked, the answer's no.

Wertheim: You didn't sidestep that.

O'Rourke: No.

What does his wife think? O'Rourke's wife, Amy, seemed hesitant about the idea of the family enduring another campaign, especially one that would demand even more than the last.

"I don't know," she said Monday after the town hall. "To me that just seems like you have to give up so much. I don't know if this is a line that I or we really want to cross."