"How Trump Campaign Uses Facebook Ads" - New York Times

The shooter in the El Paso massacre posted a manifesto minutes before he began his shooting rampage.   In it, he declares that "this attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas."

From an article by Thomas Kaplan in the New York Times, we are told that President Donald Trump's re-election campaign "has harnessed Facebook advertising to push the idea of an 'invasion' at the southern border, amplifying the fear-inducing language about immigrants that he has also voiced at campaign rallies and on Twitter."

Kaplan goes on to explain that, since January, the Trump campaign has posted more than 2,000 ads on Facebook that include the word "invasion."   This is part of an advertising barrage by the campaign that focuses on immigration, with special emphasis on the word "invasion."

We cannot prove that the El Paso shooter was influenced by Trump's rhetoric and his Facebook ads, but it is a striking coincidence, if it is not in fact connected.

Kaplan says that since late March, the Trump re-election campaign has spent an estimated $1.25 million on Facebook ads about immigration.   Many of these ads begin with what Kaplan calls "a blunt message" -- "We have an INVASION! . . . It's CRITICAL that we STOP THE INVASION."

When the Trump campaign first announced that Brad Parscale would be the 2020 campaign manager, I was at first puzzled, because Parscale has no experience as a campaign strategist or manager.   He was the digital data guru for the 2016 Trump campaign.    And then it hit me -- and since then I have been worried and sickened.

Because what this suggests -- and now seems to confirm -- is that the Trump campaign is copying the Russian playbook of flooding social media with disinformation, targeted to specific, susceptible audiences.

What makes this even more worrisome is the fact that our laws are very restrictive when it comes to domestic terrorism, because they are limited by our free speech laws.  What they are doing is probably not illegal.  In addition, there is some evidence, according to MSNBC reporting, that the Trump administration has drastically cut the budget for the analysts who could deal with this threat from domestic terrorists.   But, if it's not illegal, what could they do anyway?

Is this simply political advertising, using all modern techniques of data mining, targeted messages for specific audiences identified by demographics and interest data collected over time?    Is there anything illegal about that?

Well, what if it's the equivalent of shouting "Fire" in a crowded theater?    There are limits to free speech, so say the courts.

Ralph