DENVER—Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo on Friday defended a new campaign ad airing in Iowa and New Hampshire that claims lax border security has allowed Islamic terrorists to “freely roam U.S. soil,” saying the threat is real and he is not peddling fear.
“It is not fear-mongering to suggest that terrorists will join in taking advantage of our porous borders,” .
He was responding to a Post editorial that described the ad as “over-the-top rhetoric and fear-mongering.”
Tancredo, a congressman from Colorado, has made illegal immigration a centerpiece of his long-shot presidential campaign.
The ad shows a man in a hooded sweat shirt with a backpack in a crowded mall. The screen goes dark at the sound of an explosion, and then the ad displays clips of the aftermath of terrorist acts in Europe, including a picture of a bloodied child.
“There are consequences to open borders beyond the 20 million aliens who have come to take our jobs,” a narrator says. “Islamic terrorists now freely roam U.S. soil, jihadists who froth with hate, here to do as they have in London, Spain, Russia. The price we pay for spineless politicians who refuse to defend our borders against those who come to kill.”
———
On the Net:
