It has been 17 years since the 9/11 attacks, but Republicans are desperate and they think tying Democrats to terrorism is one of their winningest issues. Health care? Taxes? Nah, they’re looking for any flimsy connection to terrorism they can find, and I do mean flimsy.
Ohio Democrat Aftab Pureval was one of around 1,800 lawyers working for White & Case, a firm that represented Libya in a terrorism-related case. Pureval didn’t work on the case at all, and again, was one of 1,800 lawyers at the firm, but he’s a brown guy and that makes a basically nonexistent connection good enough for Republicans to run with.
Virginia Democrat Abigail Spanberger was a covert CIA officer with a high level security clearance, but Republicans are trying to tie her to terrorism by dwelling on her time as a substitute teacher at a Muslim high school where one graduate was convicted of a plot to kill George W. Bush.
And California Democrat Ammar Campa-Najjar is being connected to terrorism by way of his paternal grandfather, who was involved with the 1972 plot to kill Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics … but who died 16 years before Campa-Najjar was born. The ad, from indicted Rep. Duncan Hunter, says that Campa-Najjar changed his name to hide his family connections … when all he did was hyphenate his mother’s last name with his father’s last name, not dropping the name he shares with his late grandfather. But hey, he’s a Palestinian-Mexican-American with a problematic grandfather, so Republicans are not gonna be shy about lying.
Two of these three Democrats—Spanberger and Campa-Najjar—had security clearances in the past. But Republicans think they’re going to ride terrorism to victory, so reality has no place here.
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