Donald Trump began his campaign with a blatant appeal to bigotry of the worst type. If his final campaign ad of the 2016 cycle is any indication, it looks like he’s ending his campaign in the same manner.
Early Sunday morning, the Trump campaign released what amounts to the Donald’s closing argument to the American people. Watch it here.
The audio appears to be taken from Trump’s speech on October 13 in West Palm Beach, which was filled to the brim with anti-Semitic dog whistles. If you’ll recall, Trump ranted about Hillary Clinton being in cahoots with “international banks” to wreck the economy. “International banks,” as we all know, is a “polite” term for “Jews” in anti-Semitic circles. But don’t take my word for it. Watch the Donald himself say it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3hJjWTLRB0
And just in case Trump wasn’t clear, one of his campaign’s quasi-official Twitter accounts blasted out this shortly after the speech.
"@HillaryClinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich" her donors. – DJT
— Official Team Trump (@TeamTrump) October 13, 2016
This was so blatant that Anti-Defamation League president Jonathan Greenblatt called for Trump to cool it.
.@TeamTrump should avoid rhetoric&tropes that historically have been used ag. Jews & still spur #antisemitism. Lets keep hate out of cmpgn https://t.co/9LMnurQ3Xg
— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) October 13, 2016
Well, if this final ad is any indication, Trump didn’t heed that warning. Indeed, according to Talking Points Memo founder Josh Marshall, some blatantly anti-Semitic statements from Trump appeared to be juxtaposed with the faces of well-known Jews.
For instance, when Trump railed about the people who “control the levers of power in Washington,” the video cut to footage of one of the far right’s pet hates, George Soros. He claims that the people controlling those levers are working with “global special interests”–while we see footage of Federal Reserve chairwoman Janet Yellen. Later, when Trump rails about a “global power structure” that has put money into the hands of “a handful of large corporations and political entities,” we see footage of Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein.
To Marshall’s mind, it couldn’t be more blatant. He blasted Trump for using “standard anti-Semitic themes and storylines” mixed in with “established anti-Semitic vocabulary.” He also saw parallels with the kind of anti-Semitic excrement that was common in the 1930s. All things considered, Marshall thinks this ad leaves no doubt.
“This is an ad intended to appeal to anti-Semites and spread anti-Semitic ideas. That’s the only standard that really matters.”
We already know that Trump has openly coddled anti-Semites throughout the campaign, and more or less blinked when they attacked journalists who spoke out against him once it got out that they were Jewish. And we already know that Trump’s social media team attacked Hillary with a blatantly anti-Semitic meme that had been floating around the alt-right/white nationalist web for some time.
But Trump’s speech in October took it to another level. It proved beyond reasonable doubt that Trump himself is a stone-cold anti-Semite. And now Trump has used final ad to blow the very same anti-Semitic dog whistles. Let’s not beat around the bush. A major political party has been hijacked by a stone-cold anti-Semite. The mere fact that this was allowed to happen is nothing less than a disgrace to the nation.
I know there are a lot of people who feel they have to vote for Trump solely to stop abortion and marriage equality. Well, ask yourselves this question. Are those issues so important that we have to put a raving anti-Semite in the White House? If they are, then the religious right is even more morally bankrupt than I thought. After all, major religious right leaders are already on record as saying that Trump’s ugly comments about women were not a high priority and don’t matter as much as protecting the nation’s future from Hillary. The mere fact we even have to wonder if these so-called leaders will speak out against this outrageous final ad is so damn obscene that there are almost no words to describe it.
Even though early voting in a number of key states looks very good for Hillary, let this ad be motivation for those of you who haven’t voted to get out and do so. We cannot, repeat, CANNOT, take a chance on putting a raving anti-Semite in the White House. Let’s finish this–and send a message to the GOP that they cannot foist an anti-Semite on this nation and get away with it.
(featured image courtesy Gage Skidmore, available under a Creative Commons BY-SA license)
