JULY 6, 2020
The Trump campaign’s latest digital ads on Facebook say “WE WILL PROTECT THIS” under a statue of Jesus… except the statue in question is the famous Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Which makes you wonder… did someone on the campaign staff just search for “Jesus” and “Statue” on stock photo websites, find this one, think “JACKPOT,” and run with it immediately?
(Yes. That’s exactly what happened. Prove me wrong.)
Also, why would this statue be taken down? Who’s going after it? And what the hell does this have to do with anything?!
The Daily Beast notes that it’s not even clear how Trump would protect this statue if he wanted to.
… The photo appears to have come from an online database of free stock images.
Unlike the statues Trump and his team have focused on to date, though, Christ the Redeemer is not in the United States. There’s no indication that the 125-foot sculpture, which sits at the peak of Corcovado mountain overlooking Rio, is at risk of vandalism or removal. It’s also not clear how Trump or Pence might go about protecting it if it were threatened, which, again, it does not appear to be.
Republican campaign staffers are even lazier and more ignorant than Republican officials.
But they sure know how to spend money.
According to Facebook political ad data, the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, a joint fundraising account for the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, paid between $14,000 and $22,000 to promote 67 versions of the ad on Facebook and Instagram. The ads, which began running on Friday and are now inactive, were viewed between 930,000 and 1.1 million times, according to Facebook data.
As we posted weeks ago, there’s no danger of Jesus statues coming down in large part because they’re not widespread — certainly not on public property. (And no one cares what statues churches put up on their own property.)
This ad is nothing more than Trump’s team creating a problem that doesn’t exist, proposing a solution that isn’t necessary, and still finding a way to screw it up. It’s the entire Trump presidency in a nutshell.
(Featured image via Shutterstock. Thanks to Brian for the link)