Report: Beto Caught Running Political Ads in Mexico
Former Texas Rep. Robert “Beto” O’Rourke is one of the many Democratic candidates vying for the party’s nomination in 2020, but after a widely heralded initial rollout of his candidacy, his campaign has struggled to garner support and is rapidly sinking.
The Real Clear Politics average of polls has O’Rourke, who was once viewed as a serious contender for the nomination, way behind the leaders in sixth place with a mere 5.6 percent support among voters. That 5.6 percent is down from the 9.5 percent support he enjoyed less than a month ago, which ranked him third in the race at that point.
Bearing in mind O’Rourke’s apparent free-fall in the polls over the past several weeks, a shocking report from the Washington Free Beacon about the candidate advertising his presidential campaign in a foreign country makes a little bit more sense, as he is growing desperate to garner enough support to keep him afloat in the Democratic primary race.
The Free Beacon discovered on Friday, by virtue of Facebook’s transparency tools, that O’Rourke’s presidential campaign had allegedly paid for and ran targeted advertisements on Facebook that appeared in the news feeds of Facebook users in Mexico.
A screenshot of an ad O’Rourke had designated to run in Mexico was included in the report. That post, with event details in both English and Spanish, seemingly invited people in Mexico to join him for a campaign event on Tuesday in San Diego, California.
O’Rourke’s campaign did not respond to the Free Beacon’s questions about its advertising in Mexico. A subsequent check of his campaign’s Facebook page on Monday showed that there were no longer any targeted ads running in the foreign nation.
The Free Beacon proceeded to check every other candidate’s campaign-related Facebook page, but not a single one of them was running targeted ads outside of the United States.
The outlet even checked out President Donald Trump‘s Facebook page for his re-election campaign but found that his campaign was also only running ads inside the U.S. and in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico.
Interestingly, given all of the hostile criticism from Democrats against Trump with regard to Puerto Rico, not a single Democrat candidate is running campaign ads on the island territory they professed to care about so much more than the president.
The only possible legitimate explanation for the reported O’Rourke ads in Mexico would be an outreach effort to American citizens living abroad.
In fact, there is a special Democrats Abroad primary that will be held in March 2020 for such eligible voters, but that primary is still nearly a year away, and O’Rourke has said nothing at all to indicate that he is focused on reaching out to those American voters.
Setting aside that legitimate possibility, and given O’Rourke’s increasingly sharp rhetoric in favor of open borders — including tearing down existing border walls and barriers, and all but eliminating the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency — one can only wonder if O’Rourke’s reported targeted ads in Mexico were in search of potentially illegal voters that would support him.
Indeed, O’Rourke stands firmly among those on the left who openly support open borders for our nation, which for all intents and purposes would undermine and water down American citizenship and the rights and privileges that come along with it, such as the right to vote in U.S. elections.
Unsurprisingly, the mainstream media hasn’t really said much, if anything, about this discovery of paid campaign ads from O’Rourke that are targeting people in Mexico.
However, imagine for a moment that it was discovered by the media that the Trump campaign was running targeted ads in a foreign country — Russia, for example — and those ads weren’t obviously aimed at American citizens living abroad, but instead were aimed at regular Russian citizens.
The media would have a field day with such news, which would make for breathless and screaming headlines and talking heads for weeks on end.
Alas, it isn’t Trump reaching out to foreign nationals with an invitation to get involved in American elections, but it is instead a prominent Democrat, hence the media silence with regard to potential foreign influence in an American election. Funny how that works out.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
