Dem Candidate Pepper Sprays Self in Campaign Ad That Goes Wrong
When the going gets tough, the tough get… Stupid.
Okay, that slogan probably won’t be catching on anytime soon, but it’s an apt summary of one Democrat candidate’s desperate attempt at attention-seeking in a race that he’s poised to lose.
With less than two weeks to go before Colorado’s primary election, Levi Tillemann is apparently getting frantic. Facing an uphill battle for the 6th Congressional District, the liberal candidate has unveiled a shocking new tactic: Hurt himself on camera.
Like a class clown who will punch himself in the face for attention, Tillemann has decided to take on the school security issue by skewing facts and making a fool out of himself on social media.
In an online video that runs over two minutes, the Democrat literally pepper sprayed himself on camera to make a point, but it ended up backfiring. In the end, the stunt went wrong, and actually ended up revealing the dramatic failure of Tillemann’s incredibly weak school security plan.
Tillemann “wants to place pepper spray and other nonlethal weapons in schools to thwart active shooters and other potential threats,” reported The Denver Post.
The ad begins by spitting out one-sided statements about school security and gun crime, apparently hoping that the audience is too dense to do basic critical thinking.
“In just a few years, he’ll be in school,” a woman identified as an “Immigrant – Mother” dramatically declared as her son runs through a field. “And Donald Trump wants to give his teacher a gun?” she continues, nearly ready to break into tears.
Well, yes — provided that teacher is fully trained, cleared, and capable of safely defending students, many conservatives do want more armed staff members on school campuses. Wouldn’t it be more shocking if a political party didn’t want our children properly protected?
“More students have been killed in school shootings in 2018 than U.S. troops in combat operations,” stated the second person on the video, a board member from Aurora Public Schools.
True? Technically, yes … until you realize that the U.S. currently isn’t engaged in any official combat operations. After decades at war and thousands of troops lost, the military has officially ended ground combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
There were only two U.S. soldiers killed in Afghanistan this year, for example. There were 11 soldiers killed in Iraq, down from nearly 1,000 per year a decade ago. For comparison, over 1,000 people including children are killed riding bicycles every year.
Does that mean that bicycles or schools are now thousands of times more dangerous than fighting in the Middle East? No, obviously: It simply means that we’ve ended combat operations and the entire analogy is meaningless.
“Washington needs more doers and innovators,” Tillemann declared, finally appearing on the video. In his world, “innovation” means — you guessed it — hitting himself in the face with pepper spray.
After declaring that issuing pepper spray to teachers is the solution to stopping mass shooters, the desperate candidate braced himself to take a load of spray to the face and unraveled his entire point in the process.
As the stream of Oleoresin Capsicum, the same chemical found in edible peppers, hit Tillemann, he seemed to have no immediate reaction.
After a few moments, the spray appeared to take effect. Instead of being incapacitated, however, the liberal was able to give a running commentary of his experience.
“Wow, that’s intense,” Tillemann states, still fairly calm.
“Wow, that’s intense” is how you might describe a new Juicy-Fruit candy flavor. It is not, however, the reaction you want from a determined criminal who is on a murder spree and doesn’t plan on leaving a school alive.
Does pepper spray stop rampaging mass shooters? Well … probably not, since it could barely stop a limp-wristed liberal candidate. In fact, police officers are routinely pepper sprayed in the face as part of their training, and learn how to fight through the discomfort in case they are accidentally sprayed in the field.
It isn’t uncommon for police to inadvertently be sprayed by other officers or even their own canister during a take-down, yet officers are almost always able to keep functioning and make an arrest after being pepper sprayed.
There are also countless examples and videos of criminals fighting though pepper spray, Taser hits, and much worse in order to continue a crime spree or resist authorities.
Think about it: If your family were the ones being threatened by a criminal with a gun, would you rather defend them with a can of pepper spray that weakly reaches to about ten feet, or a loaded firearm in your hand that you know how to use?
Even other liberals criticized Tillemann’s stupid stunt and pointed out that it did more harm than good.
“I couldn’t even watch it a second time because it’s reckless and irresponsible to film that kind of stunt and put it on Facebook,” said Ken Toltz, the Democrat co-founder of Safe Campus Colorado.
Toltz told the Denver Post he couldn’t take the idea seriously and described the video as “a mad-cap stunt.”
We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
