What you should know about the Trump ad banned from TV

The ad itself is a short montage of expletive-laden clips from the trial of an illegal immigrant, Luis Bracamontes, convicted of murdering two police officers. It includes footage of masses of people breaking down various barriers, then turns to footage of Trump.

In the shorter version, the narrator links the caravan to Bracamontes, saying, “Illegal criminals like cop killer Luis Bracamontes don’t care about our laws. America can not allow this invasion. The migrant caravan must be stopped.” The tone then becomes more upbeat, telling viewers, “President Trump and his allies will protect our border and keep our families safe. America’s future depends on you. Stop the Caravan. Vote Republican.”

In the longer version, Bracamontes is explicitly blamed on Democrats, with text overlying the clips reading, “Democrats let him into our country. Democrats let him stay.”

Not only is the ad designed to play to racist and xenophobic fears, baselessly labeling immigrants as murderous criminals and trying to portray the caravan as some kind of marauding gang of Bracamontes clones, but it is also factually incorrect.

Bracamontes has no affiliation with the caravan and presumably did not come to the U.S. in any sort of procession like it. He entered the country illegally several times and was deported several times before he was convicted of murdering two police officers in Sacramento in 2014. Neither Democrats nor Republicans seemed keen on letting him in or letting him stay, as he was repeatedly arrested and deported. Indeed, if anyone were to be guilty of letting him go, it would be Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who released him after a drug arrest in 1998.

Moreover, the caravan has been breaking up day by day and may never even make it to the U.S. border. As Fox News’ Shepard Smith put it: “There is no invasion. No one is coming to get you. There’s nothing at all to worry about.” He’s correct, and in more ways than one.

Put simply, the ad’s message is tried-and-true fearmongering: The outsiders are coming to kill you, and I’m the strong man to save you.

Major networks have pulled the ad and joined CNN, which never ran it in the first place. It did, however, run during last night’s NFL game.

Some will surely decry this as infringement on free speech. That argument would hold water if it were a public square. But Fox News, Facebook, and NBC are private companies, designed to make a profit and dependent on viewers tuning in, not tuning out because of vicious, factually incorrect, and racially charged advertising.

Perhaps, fueled by the constant rhetoric from Trump, network execs thought at first that the ad was not so beyond the pale. Perhaps there was little oversight or thought put into the decision to take the money and run the ad. Either way, major American television networks and Facebook did not, themselves, think the ad too racist or false to run until it threatened their bottom line.

For his part, Trump reacted to the outrage with outright and implausible denial. He told reporters on Monday that he was unaware of the ad, saying, “You’re telling me something I don’t know about.” He then went on to defend the content he claimed to know nothing about, “We have a lot of ads and they certainly are effective, based on the numbers that we’re seeing.”

When reporters pushed back that it was offensive, he responded: “A lot of things are offensive. Your questions are offensive a lot of time, so, you know.”

The ad and its denial have no place in this country. Fox and NBC were right to join CNN in condemning it, but they should not have aired it in the first place.