While most of the country was caught up in Halloween festivities, the US president took to Twitter October 31 to post an anti-liberal, pro-Republican advertisement just days after urging the country to "come together" in light of the recent deadly synagogue shooting and mailing of explosive devices to numerous prominent Democrats.
With illegal immigration and the mythical border wall being key issues for Trump's base, it should come as no surprise that the US president would rely on this rhetoric to push for the GOP.
Luis Bracamontes, the "illegal immigrant" turned death row inmate featured in the ad, is described as someone the Democrats let into the US. Interestingly enough, the clip failed to include the fact that the office of Joe Arpaio, the Republican former Arizona sheriff who received a pardon from Trump just last year, arrested Bracamontes in 1998 on marijuana charges — only to allow him to be released "for reasons unknown," according to the Sacramento Bee.
Bracamontes' next booking would come on May 4, 2001, on, once again, marijuana-related charges. Though deported three days later, he crossed the border soon after (while Republican President George W. Bush was in office) and married in February 2002, according to the Washington Post.
With facts clearly not being key to Trump's success, it's unlikely that this brand of fear mongering and division will end any time soon. Despite the coverage surrounding the "migrant caravan," a US Homeland Security official told the Washington Post that the US-Mexico border gets "a caravan every day," and increased focus on one particular group would actually open the possibility for both drug and human trafficking elsewhere along the border.
