Trump embraced Arpaio onstage at a rally in Arizona, where the former sheriff’s racial profiling and harsh immigration tactics mobilized Latinos for Democrats
Donald Trump gave Democrats a golden moment when he embraced and then awkwardly kissed former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio near his ear at a town hall-style event in Phoenix last week.
“I don’t kiss men, but I kissed him,” Trump said afterward.
The Biden campaign has turned the kiss into a digital campaign ad reminding voters ofArpaio’s history of racial profiling and misconduct, which many Latinos in the state recall as a time of fear.
In the ad, the Trump-Arpaio embrace plays on a loop at the bottom of the screen throughout. At the top, a sequence of news clips are displayed, starting with Arpaio saying in an interview: “Well you know, they call you KKK. They did me, I think it’s an honor, right?”
That is followed by clips of local news coverage of the tactics that led to legal troubles for Arpaio. “Immigration sweeps of Latino neighborhoods, workplace raids and the alleged targeting of Latinos in traffic stops landed Arpaio in court,” says a reporter in the first clip.
Two more clips take the viewer through allegations about the targeting of people with “brown skin,” Arpaio’s conviction on criminal contempt of court for ignoring a judge’s order to stop singling out people based on their ethnicity and detaining them, and Trump’s eventual pardoning of Arpaio for that conviction.
The ad wraps up with the comment Trump made at the podium last Thursday about not kissing men.
The ad launched Saturday, between Trump events in Arizona on Thursday and in Nevada on Sunday whose purpose was partly to rally Latino supporters. The ad will run on social media platforms in those two states and Pennsylvania, the Biden campaign said.
The kiss is an example of“Trump’s airtight, long-standing relationship with America’s most infamous sheriff, who had dedicated his life and career to violating the civil rights and freedoms of Mexicans and Latinos across Maricopa County,” the Biden campaign said in a news release about the ad.
“We had a real border with this guy. People said he was too tough. … Now they’re saying, ‘Where is Sheriff Joe?’’’ Trump said at the Arizona town hall.
Arpaio has long been regarded by critics as the face of racially bigoted immigration policies, known for tactics that included holding immigrants in tent cities in the heat and having male immigrant detainees wear pink underwear. Arpaio’s actions and the 2010 state law, SB1070, that allowed police to question people about their citizenship and immigration status helped mobilize Latino voters in recent elections, including in 2020 when Arizona voted for a Democrat for president for the first time since Bill Clinton in 1996.
“Palling around with the guy who illegally rounded up and abused Mexicans and Latinos every chance he got should surprise no one — Trump has made attacking and vilifying Latinos his political brand,” Biden campaign spokeswoman Maca Casado said in a statement. “If Trump thinks he can kiss the ring of this criminal and get away with it, he has a whole other thing coming for him. … Trump doesn’t know our community’s political power.”