Fox News joined NBC in pulling a controversial TV commercial about the migrant caravan after an online backlash that included protests from Hollywood celebrities.
The ad, backed by President Donald Trump, was pulled from Fox News airwaves on Sunday, according to Marianne Gambelli, president of ad sales for the network. “It will not appear on either Fox News Channel or Fox Business Network,” she said in a statement on Monday.
NBC also said on Monday that it was yanking the spot. It aired once on “Sunday Night Football” and three times on MSNBC, according to Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal.
“After further review, we recognize the insensitive nature of the ad and have decided to cease airing it across our properties as soon as possible,” the company said in an email.
NBC’s decision to run the ad was criticized on Twitter, most notably by Hollywood personalities like Judd Apatow and Debra Messing. CNN said Saturday it refused to show the commercial because its journalists deemed it racist.
CNN refused to run this ad… I guess they only run fake news and won’t talk about real threats that don’t suit their agenda. Enjoy. Remember this on Tuesday. #vote #voterepublican pic.twitter.com/VyMm7GhPLX
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) November 3, 2018
The Republican campaign spot, which aired during NBC’s broadcast of “Sunday Night Football” just two days before the midterm election, says the migrant caravan is filled with “dangerous illegal criminals.” It says Democrats allowed the entry of Luis Bracamontes, an undocumented immigrant who was convicted of killing two sheriff’s deputies in California in 2014. The ad says President Trump and his allies will protect the border and urges viewers to “vote Republican.”
Bracamontes last entered the country in the early 2000s, when George W. Bush was president, according to The Washington Post. And media coverage of the caravan, which has been traveling north from Honduras over the past month, has revealed its participants are men, women, and children who are fleeing violence, poverty, and political repression.
Many have compared the caravan commercial to the infamous Willie Horton ad during the 1988 presidential campaign that damaged the prospects of Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis.