A Trump Campaign Ad, Deconstructed

The days of manipulating images and lies by Brad Parscale, Trump's erstwhile campaign manager, have ended; the days of manipulating images and lies by Bill Stepien, Trump's new guy, have begun. The image above is a beautiful illustration of the toxic stew of lies we can expect between now and November 3. Click here for an article at The Bulwark by Jonathan V. Last entitled "Trump's New Ad Is Amazing."

The obvious implication of the scene on the right, of a police officer apparently being beaten by "evil hippie scum," is that this is the kind of violence taking place on the streets of American cities today, and what is to be expected under a Biden administration. Just one thing: it's not a photo of an American city today. It was taken on February 14, 2014.

In Ukraine.

And the crowd is not "evil hippie scum" beating a helpless representative of Truth, Justice, and The American Way: it's pro-democracy demonstrators beating "a member of the riot police who had been brought in to try to protect the authoritarian president, Viktor Yanukovych, who was attempting to turn Ukraine into a one-party state by extralegal means."

Interesting coincidence: One of the extralegal means Yanukovych employed was a specialized federal internal police force, the Berkut, which answered directly to him and was used to assault his political opponents and tamper with elections.

Eight days after this photo was taken, "an overwhelming majority of Ukraine’s parliament—328 of 447 members—voted to remove Yanukovych from office." And three days after that, having fled the country, Yanukovych -- who had been Putin's puppet in Ukraine -- was given asylum in Moscow.

After that, Yanukovych was charged in absentia with treason against the country he had led -- "Not in the Fox News sense. They didn’t go on TV and say “Oh yeah, that guy. He was the worst. Total traitor. Human scum.” No, this was an actual criminal charge that carried severe consequences should Yanukovych ever set foot in Ukraine again.

Interesting coincidence: In 2004, when Yanukovych was running for president so that he could sell out his country to the Russians, he hired a veteran political campaigner skilled in the art of dirty tricks, honed over a 35-year career in the murky depths of Republican politics -- Paul Manafort.