Conservative super PAC pushes supposed terrorist ties in attack ad against Democratic congressional candidate

Democrat Jon Ossoff is running in a special election in Georgia's 6th congressional district to replace Rep. Tom Price (R), who now serves as President Trump's health secretary. With the April 18 election looming, Ossoff is dominating the race with the support of 43 percent of likely voters (the next highest-polling candidate is Karen Handel, a Republican, with 15 percent). But Ossoff will need more than 50 percent of the vote if he is to avoid a June 20 runoff, where his chances of seizing a plurality in the conservative district slim considerably.

To prevent Ossoff's success in the April election, the Congressional Leadership Fund super PAC is breaking the glass and hitting the big red button, in the words of The New York Times' Nate Cohn. CLF's new ad calls the news organization Al Jazeera a "mouthpiece for terrorists" over an image of Osama bin Laden, then links Ossoff to receiving Al Jazeera's money. In other words, Ossoff is practically two steps removed from bin Laden, the ad suggests.

But the alleged Al Jazeera "ties," Atlanta Magazine writes, are merely that, as a small business owner, Ossoff's "company [...] made films for the Qatar-based news network." On the other hand, only 9 percent of Americans in 2014 said they trust Al Jazeera as a news source, while 16 percent said they distrust the network.

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The whole hullabaloo might fall flat, though — 75 percent of people said they have never heard, or have no opinion of, Al Jazeera. Jeva Lange