Friday, November 2, 2018

Trump Mongers Fear Against Democrats: The "Sick" Bracamontes' Ad




"Democrats let him into our country and Democrats let him stay."

--Donald Trump

President Trump is busy sowing seeds of division and fear in a racially charged political ad.

A 53-second video remains pinned to the top of the president's popular Twitter feed. It features Luis Bracamontes, an illegal alien who was sentenced to death in April after being convicted of killing two California sheriff’s deputies in 2014. With a menacing smile, Bracamontes said he's going to "kill more cops soon."

The ad includes scenes of a migrant caravan moving toward the U.S., warning ominously, “Who else would Democrats let in?” and suggesting that more violence would soon penetrate the border.

The video is accompanied by Trump's own message – “Vote Republican now!” This ad comes right before the midterms as Trump pushes his hard-line anti-immigration policies in response to a mostly peaceful migrant caravan traveling through Mexico.

Unlike typical political ads, nowhere in this video does the president declare who paid for it. Thus, Trump has pushed the boundaries of campaign finance rules. Under current law, campaign ads are generally required to include disclaimers that clearly state who paid for the ads. Those rules are partly in place to address concerns that politicians could try and distance themselves from harsh attack ads, so as not to muddy themselves in the process.

"This shows there appears to be a gap in the law – a presidential candidate like Donald Trump could be blasting out these campaign commercial-like videos to millions of views, but viewers would not have real-time information about who is paying for them," Steven Spaulding of government watchdog group Common Cause told ABC News.

The ad is reminiscent of the infamous “Willie Horton” ad used against Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis in 1988 and condemned as racist. Horton, who was black, raped a woman while out of prison on a weekend furlough. As Massachusetts governor, Dukakis supported the furlough program. Dukakis went on to lose to Republican George H.W. Bush.

Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, called the new ad the “dog whistle of all dog whistles.” Perez told CNN: “This is distracting, divisive Donald at his worst. This is fear mongering.”

“This is a sickening ad. Republicans everywhere should denounce it,” said Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona

The Facts

How idiotic would it be to blame the Republicans for criminals who entered the country illegally under Trump or President George W. Bush?

The truth is Luis Enrique Monroy Bracamontes, who is from the Mexican state of Sinaloa, came to the U.S. illegally in in 1993 when he was 16 and Democrat Bill Clinton was president. Bracamontes was first arrested in Maricopa County in1996 for possession of narcotics for sale. He spent four months in Sheriff Joe Arpaio's tent city before he was released to ICE and deported in 1997.

Bracamontes was arrested in Arizona again in 1998 and turned over to immigration authorities, but apparently not deported.

Bracamontes was arrested a third time in 2001 for narcotics charges and transferred to ICE custody. It is unknown what ICE did with Bracamontes until he was re-arrested in Maricopa county three months later, also in 2001, for failure to appear in court.

Then Bracamontes was deported a second time for being in the country illegally. That was during the first year of the Bush administration. Bracamontes was back in America again by 2002. He married a U.S. citizen and remained in the country even as the Bush administration deported people at a record rate, topped only by the Obama administration.

When Bracamontes shot and killed the two deputies in 2014, he had been deported once under a Democratic administration and once under a Republican administration. He had been back in the United States for at least six years during the Bush administration and five years under the Obama administration.

There is no evidence that any Democrat – or any one person or party, for God's sake – allowed Bracamontes to stay in America. Democratic and Republican administrations alike have deported hundreds of thousands of people a year. What happened was a horrible tragedy, certainly a regrettable and murderous outcome, but an incident not attributable to the Democrat Party.

President Trump uses fear mongering to solidify his base and to belittle his opponents. Blame and scapegoating are tools he employs in his ever-present defense mode. The truth is Trump is not skilled at figuring out the causes of other people's behavior, or even his own, for that matter. Bracamontes is a lone-wolf killer, likely mentally ill and certainly a methamphetamine addict. He did not kill the sheriff's deputies because he was an illegal. The deranged killer has insisted all along he wanted a chance at being executed.

In America we are taught do not judge an entire group on the basis of a single association – until the reign of Trump that is. Neither should we assume all illegals are criminals or all people seeking asylum mean us harm. Is is amazing that in the aftermath of the bombs sent to Trump critics and the responsive pleas of the president for peace and harmony that the same man can use this bigoted, false political ad to accuse the opposition of murder. How small is his conscience and how great is his insensate spite?

The ad:



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