Trump campaign launches anti-impeachment blitz on Facebook, targeting four minority congresswomen

Mod: These kinds of retrograde and racist sentiments could possibly violate "Facebook Community Standards" if there wasn't quite so much advertising money involved.

Trump campaign launches anti-impeachment blitz on Facebook, targeting four minority congresswomen (Washington Post link): President Trump’s reelection campaign responded to the opening of a formal impeachment inquiry in Congress by launching a massive Facebook ad blitz, spending as much as $1.4 million on thousands of ads designed to reach voters in every state.

The online battery included misleading messages about the “socialist squad,” Trump’s epithet for the four congresswomen of color whom he previously directed to “go back” to their home countries, even though they are all American citizens.

Some of the ads accused the freshman lawmakers of making “pro-terrorist remarks,” which they have not done, and pressed supporters to join Trump’s “official impeachment defense fund,” which he has also promoted in fundraising appeals sent by email and text message. The “squad” refers to Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), none of whom was mentioned by name.

In total, the Trump campaign and its backers spent between $346,700 and $1,430,182 on more than 2,000 ads for its Facebook page from Monday to midday Friday, according to data analyzed by Laura Edelson, a researcher at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering. She obtained the data through Facebook’s public ad archive, which reports all of its data in ranges, not precise figures. Those ads had been viewed between 13.3 million and 25.3 million times, the NYU analysis found.

On Tuesday and Wednesday alone, the campaign shelled out about $500,000 on Facebook ads, according to figures tallied by ACRONYM, a digital outfit focused on liberal causes. On Wednesday alone it spent about $350,000, an amount it typically spends in a week.

The online offensive offered a window into Trump’s bare-knuckle approach to the coming impeachment battles, as he took the showdown to his favored terrain: the Internet. Already, campaign officials say they have filled their coffers with contributions. Eric Trump, the president’s second son and the executive vice president of the Trump Organization, said Thursday that the campaign had raised $8.5 million in the previous 24 hours.

The Facebook ads, which traffic in claims found to be false by The Washington Post Fact Checker, also provided a new test for the technology giant after it reaffirmed this week it would exempt speech by politicians from fact checking.

That exemption, company executives said, also applies to ads, though sponsored posts are required to meet community standards that proscribe threats as well as “content aimed at deliberately deceiving people to gain an unfair advantage or deprive another of money, property, or legal right.”

On Friday, Facebook said none of the ads violated its policies, including those that prohibit dehumanizing speech, though the company did not detail its reasoning. A spokesman for the Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.