Trump’s still flogging conspiracy theories and the fear of the South American refugee caravan, regardless of the truth, actual risk, or basic human decency. And even though they still have to cross the entire country of Mexico (as the Military Times notes, “As of Monday, the caravan was still an estimated 1,000 miles away, traveling mostly on foot, a pace that would not bring those men, women and children to the U.S. border for weeks.”), he’s ordered troops to the border right now, in a complete waste of soldiers’ time and taxpayers money, just to look tough for partisan Republicans before Election Day, Tuesday.
And now there’s this ad, which Trump himself is boosting, which focuses on a man who committed murder, who crossed the US-Mexico border illegally during the beginning of Bush’s first term, which it doesn’t mention (because the complexity of reality doesn’t make a good, racist attack ad!), preferring to place all of the blame on Democrats and Democratic policy. Here’s Kevin Kruse, an American historian, on Twitter:
His thread’s worth reading in full, as it contains the history of how a certain portion of the Republican Party willfully embraced a strategy of pushing coded racist appeals, that would slowly grow more untrue, violent, and explicit:
For those of you who don't remember, here are the 1988 ads and some supporting interviews, all taken from the outstanding documentary "Boogie Man" about GOP strategist Lee Atwater:
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A native South Carolinian, Atwater knew the power of racist appeals and was willing to go to places where others wouldn't.
But he still understood it had to be done carefully. Here's his famous interview from 1981 on the use of racial "code words"
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Unlike the Willie Horton ad -- which was outsourced to third parties to the point where Atwater insisted he had nothing to do with it -- this new ad is coming directly from the personal Twitter account of the president himself.
And it isn't just that the president of the United States is personally pushing white nationalist politics in its ugliest and crudest form, it's that he's doing it proudly and with purpose.
That is so, so much worse than "Willie Horton" ever was.As a PS, here's another way the new ad is worse -- Dukakis was blamed for a furlough that did happen during his term, albeit through a policy his Republican predecessor created.
The new ad blames Democrats for things that happened on Republicans' watch.