Trump Team Dusts Off Old “Dog-Whistle” Politics Dirty Tricks Campaigning

Presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

In my recent fact-check of the Trump call-in to Fox News, after Kamala Harris’ speech to the DNC Convention, I mentioned the Willie Horton “dog whistle” attack on Dukakis in 1988 and predicted something similar would occur as Trump uses old techniques to try to drag down his opponent—the dirtier the better, as far as the Trump campaign strategy goes. It wasn’t even more than a day later that the “Washington Post” ran a story on Trump’s attack on Harris for the release of a Willie-Horton-esque criminal named Shawn Tillman.

Talk about predictable tactics from the unscrupulous candidate in the field!

Let’s not forget that Hitler rose to power after claiming that the Reichstag was burned down by his opponents, when history has shown that it was much more likely that Hitler’s supporters committed the arson in order to blame it on his opponents.

And so it goes.

8:50 p.m. EDT

Trump attacks Harris for 2020 tweet supporting Minnesota bail fund

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By Isaac Arnsdorf

National political reporter for the “Washington Post”

“Trump misleadingly blamed Harris for releasing a man from jail who went on to commit murder.

The allegation comes from a bail fund that Harris tweeted support for in 2020, during the protests that followed George Floyd’s killing. Almost two years later, the fund provided bail for a man named Shawn Tillman, who was charged with misdemeanor indecent exposure.

A judge decided to release Tillman on bail, and that charge was ultimately dismissed. In a separate case, Tillman was later charged and convicted of murder and sentenced to life.

The Trump campaign has attacked Harris’s connection to the bail fund as part of a tactic widely viewed by scholars and other experts as playing on old racist tropes and exploiting stereotypes about crime and people of color.”