The National Republican Trust PAC has launched a 25-minute video in several key states attacking President Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress and linking them to extremist groups and opinions. The video brings up ACORN and the New Black Panther Party — and not-so-subtlety implies Obama is a Muslim, though the group behind the video says that is not the intention.
It is running heavy in North Carolina, Iowa, Kentucky, Delaware, Alaska, and Florida, Scott Wheeler, executive director of the National Republican Trust PAC, told TPMMuckraker. It began running on television stations last week but has been online for about two weeks, he said.
The ad features Muslim chanting layered over clips of Obama speaking about Islam. “Instead of standing up for America, he bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia,” the video says. But Wheeler said that ad isn’t intended to imply Obama is a Muslim.
“Well he was in the Middle East, and that’s the call to prayer baseline music,” Wheeler said. “Look what the president has said… he’s advocated negotiating with Hamas, a terrorist group.”
“I am not in anyway trying to suggest he’s a Muslim, I think he’s an atheist myself,” Wheeler said. “The only thing the radical left has in common with Islam is their mutual hatred of America.”
Also targeted in the ad was the Justice Department’s decision in the voter intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party. It appears to try to link Obama to the extremist fringe group, the New Black Panther Party.
After a voiceover that says “During the 2008 campaign, President Obama pretended to turn his back on some extremists from his past,” the ad cuts to video from a National Geographic documentary showing a member of the New Black Panther Party shouting ‘You want freedom? You’re gonna have to kill some crackers! You gonna have to kill some of those babies!”
The video calls the civil voter intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party a “prosecution” and seemingly implies that Obama was affiliated with the organization. Wheeler said it was a double standard for the media not to focus on the Justice Department’s decision in that case.
“We have the national media looking in crowds of hundreds of thousands of people trying to find one that they can try to dress up as dangerous among the Tea Partiers, and here you’ve got guys at a polling place who are visibly trying to intimidate people, and then there’s video of them saying if you want freedom you’ve got to kill crackers, you’ve got to kill cracker babies,” Wheeler said. “You would think the media would be all over that.”
“The very same left-wing media — who for years have told us how virtuous it is to protest when it’s left wing protestors who don’t pay for the system — finally the people who have been paying for the roads all these years come out and protest on the roads they brought and they’re being viciously savaged by the media day in and day out,” Wheeler said. “Then here you have Obama supporters out threatening and talking about killing people and it’s a non-story? You’re kidding me, right?”
Obama staffers Anita Dunn, Kevin Jennings, Carol Browner, and Cass Sunstein are also targeted in the ad, which also links Obama to “the extremist group ACORN.”
A website for the National Republican Trust PAC calls it “the nation’s third largest PAC dedicated to preserving and promoting limited government, free enterprise and traditional American values.”
The political ad, in three parts, can be watched below.
(H/T ThinkProgress).
Ryan J. Reilly
Ryan J. Reilly is a D.C.-based reporter for TPM. Prior to joining TPM, he worked for a news website covering the Justice Department and was a researcher for Bloomberg News. His email address is ryan(at)talkingpointsmemo.com.
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