The anti-Trump conservative group The Lincoln Project condemns the president’s connection to violence in a hard-hitting new video ad. The ad briefly tells the story of Kyle Rittenhouse, a Trump supporter who recently murdered two participants in a peaceful protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, which he’d traveled to from his home in Illinois in order to confront the demonstrators. Rittenhouse has subsequently been charged with first-degree murder.
As a narrator in The Lincoln Project’s new ad explains, Rittenhouse committed his atrocities shortly after the Trump-controlled Republican Party featured a couple at their national convention who’d gained notoriety for threatening peaceful protesters with guns. That couple — Mark and Patricia McCloskey — have faced felony criminal charges over unlawful use of a firearm. They got those charges before their spot at the Republican convention. The GOP openly promoted violent accused criminals.
The narrator in the Lincoln Project ad says:
‘This is sick. This is wrong. This is dangerous, and as long as Donald Trump is president, he’ll keep encouraging the kooks, the crazies, the extremists, the angry fringe. It doesn’t have to be this way. Reject the hate, reject the violence: America, or Donald Trump.’
Check out the video below:
It’s time we say it: Donald Trump is radicalizing our young men to become killers. pic.twitter.com/HslQJyM07L
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) September 8, 2020
Remarkably, there hasn’t even been some kind of across-the-board condemnation for Rittenhouse from the president’s own team. At a recent press conference, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany declined to single out Rittenhouse for special criticism, insisting that the president was not prepared to weigh in on the situation. Rittenhouse has been charged with first-degree murder! That’s bad! This isn’t complicated.
REPORTER: Does the president condemn the actions of Kyle Rittenhouse, who is accused of shooting protesters?
McENANY: The president is not going to weigh in on that pic.twitter.com/MNaL1tkESx
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 31, 2020
Many Americans seem sick of the chaos. As of Tuesday morning, Democratic presidential pick Joe Biden leads Trump by an average of 7.5 percent in national-level polls, according to FiveThirtyEight. The site gives Biden a 72 percent chance of winning the presidency.
Check out Twitter’s response to The Lincoln Project below:
