Trump's latest fear-mongering ad takes dirty Willie Horton-style politics to a whole new level

(Image credit: Screenshot/Twitter/Donald J. Trump)

published 1 November 2018

President Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric has reached a new level.

The Trump campaign, in an attempt to vouch for Republicans, rolled out what CNN calls "the most racially charged national political ad in 30 years" on Wednesday. It features a twice-deported Mexican man who returned to America and killed two police officers, and menacingly claims, "Democrats let him into our country."

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The ad immediately elicited comparisons to former President George H.W. Bush's "Willie Horton" ad. The 1988 ad connected Bush's Democratic competitor Michael Dukakis to Horton, a black man who raped a white woman while out of jail on a furlough program Dukakis had supported. And while it may be seen as racist today, "it was regarded at the time as devastating to the Dukakis campaign," CNN points out.

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Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.

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