Trump campaign faces backlash after posting 2 images side by side that disparage immigrants
Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump’s campaign is facing backlash after a post on Tuesday that showed two side-by-side images that disparaged immigrants, writing “Import the third world. Become the third world.”
The image on the left, captioned “Your neighborhood under Trump,” shows a nice, clean town home with the American flag hanging. There are no people in the photo.
The image on the right, captioned “Your neighborhood under Kamala,” shows a cropped version of a Getty Images photo of migrants in New York City in August 2023.
The photo mostly features people of color. The Getty Images caption describes the people in the photo as recent migrants that were camping outside of the Roosevelt Hotel, which had been made into a reception center for migrants.
Critics, responding to the post, are accusing the campaign of doubling down on racial hostility and an anti-immigrant sentiment.
“Don’t just take our word for it. They are showing all of us just how racist they are,” wrote NAACP’s X account. “This is what’s on the ballot this November.”
“Well, didn’t take too long for the Trump campaign to get to the openly racist part of their effort,” Bill Burton, former deputy press secretary for former President Barack Obama, wrote in a post on X.
The Trump campaign doubled down on the post, saying it “emphasizes the contrast between President Trump and Kamala Harris’ immigration policies.”
“President Trump puts Americans first and secured our border. Kamala Harris has opened our border to millions of illegal immigrants from all over the world and has forced struggling taxpayers to pay for their free entry into the country,” Trump campaign’s national press secretary Karoline Leavitt told ABC News in a statement.
Former Trump campaign adviser Bryan Lanza also defended the post on CNN Tuesday night, saying race was not a factor and “[he doesn’t’] think Republicans look at skin color.”
“I don’t think that that image is racist,” Republican commentator Tricia McLaughlin also said on CNN with Lanza. “I think that they’re showing chaos.”
On the campaign trail, Trump has repeated disparaging rhetoric on undocumented immigrants, claiming they’re criminals and mental health patients and often describing them with racially charged language, calling them “animals” or saying they’re “poisoning the blood of our country.”
The Trump campaign has used similar images and rhetoric showing migrant encampments in their campaign ads and other materials, claiming Vice President Kamala Harris’ agenda includes putting “illegals first.” In addition to highlighting various migrant crimes, the Trump campaign touts its “America-first agenda” as well as their promise of mass deportation on Day 1 of his presidency should he win.
Trump continues to spread the false claim that Harris was appointed “border czar,” despite Harris never actually having special responsibilities relating to the border.
Rather, Harris was tasked with leading diplomatic efforts to “address the root causes” of migration in Central America, primarily focusing on El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. In fact, Biden served a similar role when he was vice president.
“Kamala Harris has pursued a policy of allowing large numbers of unvetted migrants into our country. It has led to predictable and extremely tragic results,” Sen. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, wrote Wednesday morning on X.
During an interview on X Monday night, Trump told Musk that the migrant crisis has “overwhelmed” New York City.
Trump also insisted on repeating sweeping claims that undocumented immigrants are “non-productive” people even after Musk said undocumented immigrants are “probably good, hard-working people.”
At the Republican National Convention last month, Trump emphasized his stance on immigration, and attendees displayed signs calling for “Mass Deportations Now.”
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden on Thursday celebrated an extraordinary prisoner exchange that freed several Americans wrongfully detained in Russia, calling it a “feat of diplomacy and friendship” in remarks from the White House.
Biden was surrounded by family members of Evan Gershkovich, Paul Whelan, Alsu Kurmasheva and Vladimir Kara-Murza as he spoke about the efforts involved in the swap, which is the largest since the Cold War involving 24 people and several countries.
“This is an incredible relief for all the family members gathered here,” Biden said. “It’s a relief to the friends and colleagues all across the country, who’ve been praying for this day for a long time.”
Biden took a moment to describe the three American citizens and one legal permanent U.S. resident being brought back to the U.S. He said each was arrested, convicted and sentenced by Russian authorities “with absolutely no legitimate reason whatsoever.”
“And now their brutal ordeal is over and they’re free,” Biden said.
Biden, who officials said was directly involved in helping negotiate the deal, had gathered the families at the White House earlier Thursday to inform them that the release was underway. Biden said he and the families were able to contact the freed Americans over the phone.
When asked what he said to them, Biden replied: “I said, ‘Welcome almost home.'”
The multipart prisoner swap is the product of months of detailed, painstaking negotiations, according to national security adviser Jake Sullivan. The nations involved also included Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway and Turkey.
A senior administration official said even the day Biden announced he was no longer seeking a second term, he was on the phone working to secure this deal.
Sullivan, who addressed reporters at the White House daily briefing, choked back tears as he emotionally talked about the extensive effort to secure the deal and said it “was vintage Joe Biden rallying American rallying American allies to save American citizens.”
Biden, in his remarks, touted his administration’s work and the power of global alliances while also seemingly criticizing his Oval Office predecessor Donald Trump.
“For anyone who questions whether allies matter, they do. They matter,” he said.
“Our work did not start just on Day 1. It started before Day 1,” Biden said. “During the transition, I instructed our national security team to dig into all the cases of hostages being wrongfully detained, which were inherently — well, we inherited them from the private — the prior administration.”
“I wanted to make sure we hit the ground running, and we did,” Biden continued. “As of today, my administration has brought home over 70 Americans who were wrongfully detained and held hostage abroad. Many since before I took office.”
Later, when asked by a reporter about Trump’s repeated claims he could’ve gotten the hostages out of Russia without concessions, Biden took a more direct jab at his former political opponent.
“Why didn’t he do it when he was president?” Biden responded.
Speaking further on Thursday’s release, Biden noted several of the 16 individuals freed on Thursday were Russian political prisoners who “stood up for democracy and human rights” and were subsequently jailed by their own leaders. He took a moment to contrast that with the work of the U.S. and its partners.
“The United States helped secure their release as well. That’s who we are in the United States,” he said. “We stand for freedom, for liberty, for justice, not only for our own people, but for others as well. And that’s why all Americans can take pride in what we’ve achieved today.”
As he closed his remarks, Biden turned back to the families gathered in the State Dining Room, saying he couldn’t imagine what they’ve endured these last few years.
He then led the singing of “Happy Birthday” to Miriam, the daughter of Kurmasheva, an American-Russian journalist who was freed on Thursday. Biden said Mariam will turn 13 on Friday and will now be able to celebrate with her mother.
“That’s what this is all about. Families able to be together again, like they should have been all along,” Biden said. “So, I want to thank you again to everyone who did their part. In just a few hours, we’ll welcome home our fellow Americans.”
The two top Republicans in Congress issued a joint statement calling the Gershkovich and Whelan release “encouraging news” but then went on to cite the “costs of hostage diplomacy.”
“Without serious action to deter further hostage-taking by Russia, Iran, and other states hostile to the United States, the costs of hostage diplomacy will continue to rise. As we renew our call for the return of all persons wrongfully detained by the Kremlin, we recognize that trading hardened Russian criminals for innocent Americans does little to discourage Putin’s reprehensible behavior,” House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said.
ABC News’ Lauren Peller contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Every election cycle, political observers speculate about the power and prevalence of ticket-splitters: voters who support one party for president and another on down-ballot races. This year, their influence is unquestioned: they hold the House and Senate majorities in their hands.
Given the congressional maps and margins, both chambers are set for flips. In the Republican-controlled House, if Democratic House candidates win every district that President Joe Biden won in 2020, the party will regain control there. And if states with Senate races follow the expected presidential results, Republicans will retake the Democratic-controlled upper chamber in November.
That leaves the already influential but dwindling tribe of voters willing to split their tickets with a particularly uncommon amount of sway this November, underscoring the unsteady footing Democrats and Republicans hold in Washington and the vast importance of candidates’ ability to reach beyond partisan loyalties.
“I don’t recall any time in our history where it’s been this way, especially not in my lifetime,” said former Michigan Republican Rep. Mike Bishop, who was swept out of office in the 2018 blue wave. “It’s going to be razor thin.”
Republicans are defending their tissue-thin majority in the House, with 17 Republicans holding the line in districts that Biden took four years ago — 10 of which are in sapphire blue California and New York. And Democrats can afford to suffer only one loss in the Senate — and with a surefire defeat in West Virginia’s open Senate race, they’ll need battle-tested incumbents to hang on in ruby red Montana and Ohio.
That’ll leave both parties leaning on a trend that has precipitously dropped in recent years.
In 1988, the first of a series of consecutive, competitive election years, half the states with Senate races supported the same party for president and Senate, a number that grew to around 70% by 2000. By 2016, there was no difference between the Senate and presidential map, and in 2020, only Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, bucked her state’s presidential results, winning reelection on the back of a longstanding brand of pragmatism.
The trend has bucked the historic mantra that “all politics is local,” leaving national politics to rule the day and margins in statewide and House races to more closely track presidential election results.
“With ticket-splitting, you’re dancing on the head of a pin,” said Mike Madrid, a GOP strategist based in California, which is home to several House Republicans in Biden-won districts.
The key to winning over enough of the remaining ticket-splitters, Democrats and Republicans said, is establishing a candidate’s unique brand, which lawmakers this year are hard at work trying to accomplish.
Montana Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat, makes a concerted effort at bolstering his just-like-you reputation as a farmer, while Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown doubled down on his blue-collar appeal as a pre-Trump era populist.
And in California, Republican Reps. David Valadao and Mike Duarte have highlighted their own experience as farmers, for instance, while Republican Rep. Mike Garcia has promoted his time as a naval combat pilot.
All the while, the lawmakers have avoided hammering away at the other party, instead focusing on flaws specifically with their leaders, while working to push bipartisan measures in Congress that could address local issues and constituents’ concerns.
“It’s the way you act and the way you speak,” said New York GOP strategist Tom Doherty. “Work with the other side. Everything you do can’t be, ‘they’re bad people because they’re Democrats,’ or ‘they’re bad people because they’re Republicans.'”
“It’s incredibly important that the brand is built on authenticity, and that’s really why people split tickets,” added one Democratic strategist working on Senate races. “Partisanship tells us a lot, but ultimately, people tend to vote for the candidate who they think is A, on their side, and B, giving it to them straight.”
For some lawmakers in particularly hostile political territory, having a high-profile break with your party or staking out a big claim on an unconventional issue given a candidate’s partisanship could also prove beneficial.
New York Republican Rep. Marc Molinaro used his opening ad to discuss abortion, saying that “I believe health decisions should be made between a woman and her doctor, not Washington.” Tester stayed away from his party’s national convention in Chicago this month. And Brown is out with an ad featuring a Republican sheriff highlighting efforts to stem the flow of fentanyl across the southern border.
“You need to have something that people don’t expect,” said former Republican Rep. Steve Stivers, a former chair of House Republicans’ campaign arm. “It doesn’t need to be a giant disagreement, but it needs to be unexpected, I think, to really catch people’s attention and build an independent brand.”
“You have to have those disagreements,” agreed former Democratic Rep. Nick Rahall, whose opposition to abortion and A+ rating from the National Rifle Association helped protect him in a red district in Ohio until Republicans finally unseated him in 2014. But, he warned, “it’s not a guarantee.”
Already, the country saw some candidates defy political gravity.
Despite having a disappointing 2022 cycle overall, Republicans were able to win and flip several Biden-won House districts in California and New York — the same seats that make up the path to the House majority — on messages on crime and the border while keeping former President Donald Trump at arm’s length.
But that was then. This year, the matchup between Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump will be the gravitational force in elections.
“Republicans in Biden districts found an issue that resonated with persuadable voters,” said former New York Rep. Steve Israel, who chaired House Democrats’ campaign arm for two cycles.
Replicating that success, though, will be “more difficult in a presidential year for Republicans,” Israel said.
This year’s presidential election is shaping up as another test of how much the rubber band between presidential and down-ballot margins can stretch — before it snaps.
“There are elections where the top the ticket is so overwhelming that everybody gets washed away. That is certainly something that can happen. But the only defense is to control your own persona and your own message,” said William O’Reilly, a GOP strategist who has worked on down-ballot races in New York. “You have to swim the tide, do the best you can and hope it’s not too overwhelming.”
There’s no way to know precisely how far a candidate can run ahead of the top of the ticket, but Madrid, who is also a senior fellow at the University of California, Irvine, studying the state’s competitive Orange County, said, “anything over 5-7 points is stretching the rubber band pretty tight.”
That’s on top of the increasing tribalism of modern politics.
Bishop, the former Michigan congressman who lost in 2018, said more and more people are less eager to split tickets and more than willing to simply pull a lever against a party they dislike — and there’s virtually nothing a candidate can do to reach those voters.
“There was nothing that I could say,” Bishop said of his 2018 race. “It didn’t matter who I was, what I stood for, whether or not they had confidence in my ability to represent them. It was an absolute protest vote, and for the first time I almost lost my hometown that I used to drag through at 60%, 70%.”
When asked if there’s anything down-ballot candidates can do to distance themselves from the party standard bearers, Bishop sounded a pessimistic tone.
“I just think the current is so strong at the top of the ticket that they’re getting pulled along,” Bishop said of the presidential candidates’ pull. “These personalities are bigger than life.”
(CHICAGO) — When Kentucky state Rep. Rachel Roberts was first running for her seat, she was advised to not use a word common in political campaigns: “values.”
Roberts, now the only Democrat representing northern Kentucky in the state legislature, was running in a 2020 special election in competitive region of the state just outside of Cincinnati at a time when Republicans had a stranglehold on rhetoric on “freedom,” “patriotism” and the American flag.
“I’d get hammered,” Roberts said she was told. “The Republicans would say Democrats aren’t the party of values.”
Walking around the Democratic National Committee this week, things couldn’t be more different.
The word “freedom” is on seemingly on the lips of every attendee and speaker — and the name of Beyonce’s hit song and now-campaign anthem. Audience chants of “USA!” puncture speakers’ remarks as they wave signs saying the same. Camo hats bearing the names of Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz pockmark the crowd. And musician Jason Isbell performed the country hit song “Something More Than Free.”
The convention marks a culmination of decades of Democratic efforts to take back patriotism after years of Republicans owning messaging around “freedom” and the American flag.
For years, the party lamented the domination Republicans held on symbols of patriotism, a monopoly that started in during the Reagan presidency and that Democrats couldn’t break.
“You had a Republican Party that in the 80s and 90s, seized the freedom mantle using guns. The Second Amendment was America’s first freedom,” said Jim Kessler, the co-founder of Third Way, a center-left think tank. “Right to life was a version of freedom, too.” Where Democrats supported freedom was a license to behave poorly, like burning a flag.”
Now, after having been ceded to Republicans for decades “freedom” is the word bouncing off the walls of Chicago’s United Center. And Democrats are reveling in the reversal of their messaging fortunes.
“Reclaiming the flag and reclaiming freedom and democracy, I think that was a feeling broadly. But I think within the last several cycles, it became clearer how to do that in a way that had broad appeal and resonated with people,” said one Democratic strategist with ties to Harris’ team.
After decades being shut out from leaning into patriotism, Democrats said they were handed an opening by their sworn enemy — former President Donald Trump.
The Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, spurred by Trump’s conspiracy theories about the 2020 election results and led by his supporters, jolted the transfer of power from the former president to his successor. And the Supreme Court decision scrapping constitutional abortion protections allowed Democrats to go on offense on a culture war in which they’d long been in a defensive crouch.
All the sudden, Democrats said, democracy was teetering. Women’s bodily autonomy was at risk. And the battle for “freedom” was on.
“The Dobbs decision all of a sudden gave Democrats the opportunity for a reset button on that issue, on patriotism. And I think Donald Trump gave us the opportunity on Jan. 6 to start retaking those themes,” former Alabama Sen. Doug Jones, D, said, referencing the Supreme Court’s ruling.
“The combination of Trump and January 6 and the Dobbs decision gave Democrats an opportunity to reset and say, ‘this is really what freedom means. That is not freedom, folks, that is oppression, that is autocracy. Freedom means liberty, and this is what we stand for.'”
Democrats didn’t storm the gates right away.
With President Joe Biden still as the party’s standard bearer, he and his campaign focused on a fight for democracy, while also pushing for codification of abortion protections — two issues that weren’t consistently and explicitly linked in campaign messaging.
But after the president ended his campaign and Harris rose as his replacement atop Democrats’ tickets, the messaging changed.
“Freedom” became her rallying cry — the climax of a push by Harris and the party at large.
“Democrats had been concerned about Republicans taking over these quintessentially American words for a while, ‘freedom,’ ‘liberty,'” said Jamal Simmons, Harris’ former communications director in the vice president’s office. “The Democrats were trying to figure it out. The vice president was very focused on how Democrats can recast this word.”
Now, “freedom” is being used as a catchall.
Beyond freedom to access reproductive health care and a democratic process, the message is being used by Harris to push for everything from freedom for students to go to school without being shot to freedom to “get ahead” economically and more.
“Are we fighting for freedom? That’s what I thought,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said at a meeting of the Democratic National Committee’s women’s caucus. “Freedom is not drowning in medical debt. Freedom is earning the same salary as a man does for doing the same job…Freedom is about making our own decisions about our own bodies.”
To be certain, Democrats aren’t dominating the war over “freedom.”
Republicans still lean hard on patriotism, adorning their rallies and suit jacket lapels with American flags and turning Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to be an American” into a conservative hymn. And the party still is able to say it wants more funding for the military than its Democratic foes in Congress, who insist on matching boosts in Pentagon spending with rises in funds for other domestic priorities.
But for Democrats, just being in the fight for one of the most potent symbols in electoral politics is a breath of fresh air.
“I think the narrative has taken some of those words and said that they belong to Republicans, just like, apparently, red trucker hats only belong to Republicans,” Roberts, a delegate to the Democratic National Committee and now a Democratic leader in the Kentucky state House, told ABC News. “And we are demanding, no, these are universal words.”
