Staff Reports
A new campaign ad offers some harsh words for Republican congressional hopeful “Javi“ Manjarres. In the ad, Manjarres is called a “bigot,” a “racist,” and an “attempted murderer.”
It’s got all the makings of a smear-filled attack ad … only it was released by the Manjarres campaign itself.
Huh?
In the ad posted on YouTube, Manjarres quotes several Twitter trolls spewing those attacks against him and attempts to tie them to his possible Democratic opponent, Ted Deutch. Manjarres is running in a Republican primary for the right to face Deutch in a race for Florida’s 22nd Congressional District.
However, it’s not quite clear what Deutch has to do with a bunch of cherry-picked Twitter bullies. Manjarres claims Deutch “fully embraces and defends his extremist supporters and the hate-driven racial slurs that they’ve made against me.”
To back that up, Manjarres quotes a fundraising email from the Deutch campaign in which Deutch states “I am proud to represent our community.”
That fragment is highlighted by Manjarres to apparently show that Deutch supports everything written by anyone on Twitter.
Manjarres also highlights a portion of the email that criticizes Manjarres for calling Deutch’s supporters “rodents.” It’s not clear how Manjarres’s own attacks make Deutch responsible for others’ Twitter posts.
Now certainly some of these attacks against Manjarres are over-the-top. In fact, a lot of the language online needs to be toned down.
It’s just not quite clear what Deutch has to do with it, despite Manjarres’s best efforts to blame the congressman.
What’s ironic is that in an ad lashing out at over-the-top smears and slurs, Manjarres closes by doing the very thing he’s supposedly criticizing. Less than a minute after denouncing claims that he’s a racist, Manjarres himself says the Democratic Party “harbors hateful, racist extremists and their un-American political agenda. It’s the party of Ted Deutch.”
Those aren’t words from some nameless Twitter troll — it’s straight from the mouth of the person running to represent the 22nd District in Congress.
Someone should really denounce that type of hate-driven language.
