One day and counting
Just one more day, and we’ll be free – for a year or so – of the painful, deceitful, manipulative internet and television commercials and mailers known as campaign ads.
The worst and most racially charged national political ad in three decades is a new web video, tweeted by none other than President Donald Trump on Thursday, five days before the midterm elections.
It falsely accuses Democrats of plotting to help people Trump depicts as Central American “invaders” overrun the nation with cop killers.
Produced for the Trump campaign, the video features Luis Bracamontes, a Mexican man who had previously been deported multiple times but returned to the United States and was convicted in February in the slaying of two California deputies.
“I’m going to kill more cops soon,” a grinning Bracamontes is shown saying in court as captions flash across the screen reading “Democrats let him into our country. Democrats let him stay.”
Then the ad flashes to footage of the migrant caravan of Central American asylum seekers that is currently in Mexico.
The ad plays to white fear and aims to distract from real issues, such as health care – which Republicans are running from.
But not so fast – Politifact.com gives the ad a “pants-on-fire” rating.
Not only is the caravan not a convention of cop killers, but the reality is that Bracamontes’ last illegal entry (all were before the 2014 police shooting) was under George W. Bush, a Republican president.
The majority of his time going undetected also was on the Republicans’ watch, though some of it was on the Democrats’ watch, too.
“Democratic and Republican administrations deported Bracamontes, but also failed to keep Bracamontes out of the United States. We found no evidence that he was proactively allowed to stay. We rate this claim Pants on Fire,” Politifact writes.
Bracamontes is now on death row in California.
Critics – and there are many – say the ad is the latest example of our president’s willingness to lie and fear-monger to create more racial and societal discord and to bolster his own political power by trying to keep Republican majorities in Congress.
One day and counting.
But there’s more. Ask Arpaio
The serial border crosser Luis Bracamontes was released once for deportation and once without deportation by none other than Trump supporter and former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whom Trump has praised lavishly. Trump even pardoned Arpaio in August 2017 for his criminal contempt of court conviction related to racial profiling practices.
Reached Thursday for comment by the Arizona Republic newspaper, Arpaio said that as far as he is concerned, he “did his job” in holding Bracamontes in his jail and turning him over to immigration officials. He said if Bracamontes at one point was released from his custody and not deported, it was because of “the broken immigration system.”
But the Arizona Bee also checked state police records and found that Bracamontes was arrested on drug charges in Phoenix in 1998 before being released “for reasons unknown” by Arpaio’s office.
There’s still more
The president and his ad want his base to equate the brown faces in the caravan with “cop killers.”
But ask yourselves: What was the last big headline you heard or saw about officers being shot?
It was likely the one about four police officers being wounded while trying to stop the active shooter at Pittsburg’s Tree of Life Synagogue where an antisemitic extremist so xenophobic and far-right nationalist that, based on his own words, he was frustrated with Trump for not being enough of a far-right nationalist.
The man accused in that shooting is 46-year-old, blue-eyed Robert Bowers of Pittsburg, who falsely blamed Jews for helping the migrant caravans.
In other words, Bowers bought into the same right-wing false conspiracy theory – that Democratic donor George Soros funded the caravan – Trump is peddling in his campaign video.
About the lies
Now why should we be concerned about that ad as just one more falsehood from our president?
After all, The Washington Post on Friday had this headline: “President Trump has made 6,420 false or misleading claims over 649 days” – the length, at that point, of his presidency.
Lying more seems to be the one area in which Trump has grown while in office.
“In the first nine months of his presidency, Trump made 1,318 false or misleading claims, an average of five a day. But in the seven weeks leading up the midterm elections, the president made 1,419 false or misleading claims – an average of 30 a day,” according to the Post’s analysis of the paper’s Fact Checker’s database, which analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement uttered by the president.
The presidential misinformation picked up dramatically as Trump has campaigned across the country in rallies for his congressional supporters. Each rally usually yields 35 to 45 suspect claims.
We can’t wait to see how many new ones were cataloged here in Chattanooga on Sunday.