John McCain Wants to Stop You From Watching His Own Danged Campaign Ad
When he was running for re-election to his Arizona U.S. Senate seat in 2010, John McCain appeared in the ridiculous video above, an anti-immigrant campaign ad whose solemn punchline was, “Complete the danged fence.” Now that it’s no longer considered politically acceptable to hate Mexican people unless your name is Donald Trump, McCain isn’t so proud of the spot anymore.
Ann Kirkpatrick, a Democratic congresswoman from Arizona who is challenging McCain for his Senate seat this year, recently re-uploaded the ad to YouTube with one subtle but stinging modification: the addition of Spanish subtitles. This week, The Hill notes, the McCain campaign blocked Kirkpatrick’s subtitled version of the ad, citing a copyright violation.
It’s possible that McCain’s camp is really only interested in protecting its intellectual property. It seems more likely that the senator, who said this month that a Trump-led Republican ticket would make the Kirkpatrick battle “the race of my life,” thanks to the presumptive nominee’s lack of support among Arizona’s significant Hispanic population, wants to distance himself from his own Trumpian anti-immigrant rhetoric. As of March, polls showed McCain tied with Kirkpatrick, despite his vastly superior name recognition in the state, the Hill notes.
As the Spanish say: le salió el tiro por la culata.