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Donald Trump and his allies are trying to appeal to Black voters with overpriced sneakers, fried chicken, past-their-prime rappers and, now, some plain old bigotry to boot.
In recent months, Trump-allied groups have begun running radio ads targeting voters in largely Black areas that push a raft of offensive claims as they seek to undermine support for President Joe Biden.
The ads were highlighted by sports journalist Jemele Hill over the weekend during her coverage of the NFL draft in Detroit.
"Don’t know if people have heard these ads Trump’s campaign is running on urban radio but they are WILD,” Hill wrote, “as in wildly filled with massive misinformation, sprinkled in with some bigotry.”
Hill didn't share an example, but a similar-sounding ad called “Our Communities” was launched by the pro-Trump organization MAGA Inc. in March and schedule for airtime in Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
The ad is chock-full of MAGA misinformation. In it, a narrator claims that Biden is “letting Mexican cartels pump drugs and fentanyl into our streets,” that he’s “busing rapists and murderers into our communities,” and that the “crooks in Congress are handing our tax dollars to illegals.”
It’s hard to choose where to start with the corrections.
Trump has promoted racist generalizations of Mexican immigrants as drug-dealers, killers and rapists from the moment he publicly launched his first campaign bid in 2015, despite that data shows immigrants tend to commit crimes at lower rates than U.S.-born citizens. There’s certainly no evidence the Biden administration is letting cartels “pump drugs” into American streets. In fact, there’s ample evidence to the contrary. And despite zero-sum rhetoric about immigrants receiving jobs, privileges and welfare benefits over American citizens, these claims keep being proven false.
The ad also pushed anti-trans bigotry, underscoring a phenomenon I've highlighted in the past: Trump and his minions trying to spread their anti-trans agenda through Black communities.
The narrator claims Trump will “protect our daughters’ sports teams” from “men competing against women” and “stop the sexualization of our children.” Experts who oversee women’s sports have said trans people’s involvement doesn’t rank anywhere near their industries’ top issues. And let’s just say that Trump is an unusual choice when making the case against sexualizing children.
The ad is an obvious attempt to indoctrinate Black voters with a MAGA worldview. But it was so packed with bigoted propaganda, it felt like it needed a disclaimer at the end like a prescription drug ad. Perhaps a fast-talking narrator at the end could note that side effects of electing Trump include attacks on Black election workers, installation of judges who’ve gutted Black voting rights, accusations against largely Black cities of election fraud, vows to shield police accused of violent misconduct, open association with neo-Nazis and white supremacists, a full-on assault on Black history in schools, and routine public attacks on Black women.