Trump posts racist new ad days before midterm elections

In one of the most racially charged US political ads in decades, President Donald Trump and the Republican Party accuse Democrats in Congress of plotting to help Central American migrants invade the country and kill police.

Trump tweeted the new web video on Thursday, five days before the midterm congressional elections.

The political ad is the most extreme step yet in the most inflammatory closing argument of any election campaign in recent memory, according to a CNN report.

“The Trump campaign ad is the latest example of the President's willingness to lie and fear-monger in order to tear at racial and societal divides; to embrace demagoguery to bolster his own political power and the cause of the Republican midterm campaign,” the report said.

The web video features Luis Bracamontes, a Mexican man who had previously been deported but returned to the United States and killed two sheriff's deputies in the state of California in 2014.

Bracamontes was in the United States as an illegal immigrant. He was sentenced to death in February of 2018.

"I'm going to kill more cops soon," a grinning Bracamontes is shown saying in court as captions flash across the screen reading "Democrats let him into our country. Democrats let him stay."

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The ad recalls the notorious "Willie Horton" campaign ad financed by supporters of former President George H.W. Bush (Bush senior) in the 1988 US presidential election.

Horton was a convicted murderer who committed rape while furloughed under a program in the state of Massachusetts where Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis was governor.

The ad has since come to be seen as one of the most racially problematic in modern US political history since it played into white fear and African-American stereotypes.

It was regarded at the time as devastating to the election campaign.of Dukakis, who lost to Bush in the 1988 US presidential election.

However, Trump's web video, unlike its 1988 predecessor, bears the official endorsement of the leader of the Republican Party -- Trump -- and is not an outside effort.

Given that Trump distributed it from his Twitter account, It also comes with all the symbolic significance of the presidency itself.

The ad was denounced by Democrats and some Republicans as toxic or even racist.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez said the ad was a sign of desperation and suggested that Trump was losing the argument over health care that is at the center of the Democratic campaign.

"This is distracting, divisive Donald at his worst," Perez said in an interview with CNN. "This is fear mongering. ... They have to fear monger and his dog whistle of all dog whistles is immigration. This has been Donald Trump's playbook for so long."

David Cicilline, a Democratic member of the US House of Representative, described the video as a “horribly racist” attempt by Trump to “prey on people’s fears and lack of information about how the immigration system works.”

Some conservatives, however, applauded the president for ramping up his focus on an issue that helped him get elected in 2016. “The clip of convicted cop murderer Luis Bracamontes laughing in a California court is something every American should see,” Fox News host Laura Ingraham wrote in a tweet.

The Trump ad also flashes to footage of the Central American migrant caravan that is currently in Mexico and headed to the US, which Trump says is preparing an invasion of the country.

Trump has repeatedly warned that the caravan is laden with criminals or also includes Middle Eastern terrorists. He has offered no evidence for such claims, however, and even admitted last week there is no proof to support them.

Controversy over the new ad is certain to explode across the final days of the election in which polls suggest Democrats could take back the House of Representatives but Republicans could keep or even expand their Senate majority.

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