Video of cop killer latest Trump campaign push

WASHINGTON » The widows of two police officers the Mexican immigrant murdered were invited to President Donald Trump’s 2017 address to Congress. The conservative Breitbart News faithfully chronicled his conviction and death sentence. His snarling, expletive-filled rant about killing police officers appeared in a littlenoticed January 2018 Trump campaign ad.

Now, Luis Bra cam ont es’ menacing smile has abruptly taken a central role in Trump’s closing midterm election argument about immigration as the president tweeted out a video of the Latino man’s courtroom appearance in what was immediately denounced by some Democrats and Republicans as a racist campaign tactic.

Bracamontes, an immigrant living in the U.S. illegally, sports a shaved head and long chin hair and speaks in accented English in the video, and his words are clear: He’s killed cops and he’s “gonna kill more cops soon.”

The video , which Trump tweeted late Wednesday, alleges without evidence that Democrats were responsible for allowing Bracamontes into the U.S. It comes amid a frenzy of hardline immigration proposals pushed out by Trump in the final stages of the campaign, including sending troops to the border and revoking birthright citizenship.

“This is a sickening ad. Republicans everywhere should denounce it,” said Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, a frequent Trump critic. And Rep. Carlos Curbelo, R-Fla., seeking re- election, said he’d not seen the video but criticized Trump’s use of it.

“I can tell you that it’s definitely part of a divide-and-conquer strategy that a lot of politicians, including the president, have used successfully in the past,” Curbelo said Thursday on CNN. “I hope this doesn’t work.”