Trump campaign regularly posted ads on Facebook using the word 'invasion'

Since January, President Trump's re-election campaign has posted more than 2,000 Facebook ads focusing on immigration that use the word "invasion," The New York Times reports.

He has also used the word "invasion" in several tweets regarding immigrants at the border. Trump's word choice is in the spotlight following Saturday's massacre at a Walmart in El Paso, which left 22 people dead. The suspect is believed to have written an online screed ahead of the attack, declaring that it was "a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas."

Data from Bully Pulpit Interactive, a Democratic communications firm tracking 2020 presidential candidates' digital advertising, shows that since late March, Trump has spent an estimated $1.25 million on Facebook ads about immigration. The "invasion" ads were a small portion of the ad buy, the Times reports, with most first running between January and March and a few dozen launching in May. One ad stated, "We have an INVASION!" followed by "It's CRITICAL that we STOP THE INVASION."

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Throughout his presidential campaign, Trump made inflammatory statements about immigrants, saying Mexico was sending rapists across the border and calling for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States" following the 2015 terrorist attack in San Bernardino. On Monday, he said "mental illness and hatred pulls the trigger, not the gun," which earned a sharp rebuke from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)."White supremacy is not a mental illness," she tweeted. "We need to call it what it is: domestic terrorism. And we need to call out Donald Trump for amplifying these deadly ideologies."