Julián Castro buys ‘Fox & Friends’ ad to send ‘message’ to Trump on El Paso shooting
Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro on Wednesday will release an advertisement on Fox News that directly blames President Trump’s rhetoric for the mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, that left 22 people dead.
The ad is set to air throughout the day on Fox News in Bedminster, N.J., where the president is residing this week. The Washington Post reported that Castro’s campaign paid $2,775 for multiple spots on Fox News, including “Fox & Friends,” a program frequently watched by Trump.
The ad includes Castro, the only Latino candidate among more than two dozen White House hopefuls, fiercely criticizing Trump and his divisive rhetoric on immigration.
“President Trump: You referred to countries as shitholes,” Castro says at the beginning of the ad, set in an empty warehouse in Iowa. “You urged American congresswomen to ‘go back’ to where they came from. You called immigrants rapists.”
{mosads}“As we saw in El Paso, Americans were killed because you stoked the fire of racists,” adds Castro, a former mayor of San Antonio, Texas, who later served as secretary of Housing and Urban Development during the Obama administration. “Innocent people were shot down because they look different from you. Because they look like me. They look like my family.”
“Words have consequences,” he says near the end.
“Ya Basta,” Castro says in conclusion, a Spanish phrase meaning “enough.”
The ad was distributed by the campaign on Tuesday, about 10 days after a gunman opened fire at a Walmart in El Paso, killing 22 and wounding several others. The suspect allegedly shared a racist, anti-immigrant manifesto that described a “Hispanic invasion” before carrying out the attack. Democrats have argued that the rhetoric echoed that of Trump’s.
“Donald Trump’s hateful rhetoric inspired the largest violent attack on the Latinx community in history,” Castro campaign manager Maya Rupert said in a statement. “Yet, even in the wake of this attack his campaign continues to use words like ‘invasion’ to describe immigrants, and attacks two of the most prominent Latino politicians. Julián isn’t afraid of Donald Trump or his bigoted agenda, and will continue to expose his racism and division until he defeats him next November.”
Following the El Paso shooting, Trump called on the nation to condemn bigotry and white supremacy, saying “these sinister ideologies must be defeated.”
Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) has made remarks similar to Castro’s ad message, saying earlier this month that Trump was a “racist” who is responsible for the massacre.
Updated: 2:23 p.m.