Washington, NBC and Fox News said in statements that their networks will no longer air US President Donald Trump’s campaign’s anti-immigrant advertisement, deemed as the most racially charged national political ad in 30 years.
The ad released by the campaign last week, features Luis Bracamontes, a Mexican man who had previously been deported but returned to the US and was convicted in February in the killing of two California deputies, reports CNN.
“I’m going to kill more cops soon,” a grinning Bracamontes is shown saying in court as captions flash across the screen reading “Democrats let him into our country. Democrats let him stay”.
The ad also flashes footage of the migrant caravan of Central American asylum seekers that is currently in Mexico. “Who else would Democrats let in?” a caption asks.
NBC was first to announce the change on Monday.
“After further review, we recognise the insensitive nature of the ad and have decided to cease airing it across our properties as soon as possible,” it said in a statement.
Fox soon followed suit.
“Upon further review, Fox News pulled the ad and it will not appear on either Fox News Channel or Fox Business Network,” the network’s ad sales president Marianne Gambelli told CNN in a statement.
The ad ran about a dozen times on Fox News and Fox Business, combined, before being pulled.
Facebook also came under scrutiny for letting the Trump campaign run the ad on its platform.
On Monday afternoon the company said “this ad violates Facebook’s advertising policy against sensational content so we are rejecting it. While the video is allowed to be posted on
Facebook, it cannot receive paid distribution.”
On Twitter, Brad Parscale, Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, ignored the decision by Fox to pull the ad.
Instead, Parscale lambasted NBC, CNN, and Facebook and said the “#FakeNewsMedia” was “trying to control what you see and how you think”.
On Monday night, the President was asked about the controversy by a reporter.
He said: “I don’t know about it. I mean, you’re telling me something I don’t know about.” He added: “We have a lot of ads, and they certainly are effective based on the numbers we are seeing.”
When asked about the offensive nature of the ad, Trump said: “Well, a lot of things are offensive. Your questions are offensive a lot of the times.”