Trump Spanish-language ad equates progressives, socialists

President Trump’s reelection campaign in a new Spanish-language digital ad equates progressive politics in the United States to socialist dictators and politicians in Latin America.

The ad opens with presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden saying he’s “going to go down as one of the most progressive presidents in American history,” a snippet from a speech last week in Wilmington, Del., on economic policy for Black and Hispanic communities.

“¿Progresista?” asks a chyron on the ad, before cutting to a montage of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, former Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro, and former Colombian presidential candidate Gustavo Petro, a socialist who lost the 2018 presidential election.

“Our progressive governments,” says Chávez; “progressive ideas, the ideas of socialism,” says Castro; “this new progressive axis would have very powerful allies,” says Petro.

The ad then cuts back to Biden: “one of the most progressive presidents in American history,” and back to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro exclaiming, “leftist revolutionary progressives!”

The ad shows the former vice president greeting Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a former Democratic presidential candidate and self-described democratic socialist, as a Spanish-language chyron reads, “When they say progressive, they mean…”

“A socialist revolution in the very nose of the United States,” says Castro in a snippet from a 1981 speech celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution’s socialist turn.

“Progressive=socialist,” reads the final screen of the ad.

In a press release for the new ad, the Trump campaign called Biden’s campaign “anti-Hispanic” for its public safety, tax and educational policies, adding the former vice president would return “to a failed U.S.-Cuba policy that enables the Castro regime to prop-up the dictatorship in Venezuela and Marxist guerrillas that terrorize Latinos in Colombia and other countries.”

The ad is the latest in what’s quickly becoming a tit-for-tat appeal to Hispanics between the Trump and Biden camps, each making parallels between their opponent and the worst of Latin America’s dictatorships.

While the Trump campaign has focused its message on equating progressivism and socialism, the Biden camp has released its own ads comparing Trump to the likes of Castro, Chávez and Maduro, accusing similar authoritarian tendencies.

The messaging on Latin America’s authoritarian socialists is especially pertinent in Florida, which will be a key state in the election and hosts a large proportion of Cuban Americans, as well as for immigrants from countries like Venezuela and Nicaragua.

This story was updated at 4:23 p.m.