Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler's latest campaign ads are littered with racism

Two new Facebook ads for Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) feature Donald Trump using an explicitly racist term to describe the coronavirus — just weeks after Loeffler claimed not to be at all racist.

The advertisements, posted on Tuesday by her campaign, feature a video of lame-duck Donald Trump praising Loeffler at a rally.

“Kelly Loeffler, a person who is just unbelievable,” Trump touts. “When our nation was hit with the China virus, Senator Loeffler helped rescue the U.S. economy.”

“Take it from President Trump,” her campaign urges in the accompanying text. “Kelly Loeffler is a CHAMPION for Georgians.”

Trump has frequently used this racist language to describe the coronavirus. Though in March, he agreed to stop calling it the “Chinese virus,” two months later he began calling it the “China virus” — even though public health experts have warned that doing so is harmful.

The World Health Organization recommends using names based on the effects of the viruses themselves, rather than their apparent geographic origin, “to minimize unnecessary negative effects on nations, economies and people.”

Trump’s own Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned in June that “stigma and discrimination can occur when people associate a disease, such as COVID-19, with a population or nationality, even though not everyone in that population or from that region is specifically at risk for the disease.”

And according to an October report, racist language like this has helped fuel hate crimes against Asian and Asian-American people. Since March, at least 2,700 such attacks have been reported in the United States — ranging from verbal insults to stabbings.

Asked in August about the “racial overtone” of his term, Trump replied that he has “great Asian support. And they understand exactly what it is that we’re doing and saying.”

Contrary to his bluster, a Navigator poll taken two months earlier showed 66% of Asian American registered voters disapproved of his handling of the pandemic and more than 75% believed his “words and actions” put lives at risk.

A Loeffler campaign spokesperson did not immediately respond to an inquiry for this story.

Like Trump, Loeffler has been accused of racist words and deeds since she was appointed to a vacant Senate seat last December.

Asked earlier this month at a debate about her decision to campaign with racist Rep.-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene (R) and appear on a show hosted by a prominent white supremacist, Loeffler denied being even a little bit racist.

“There’s not a racist bone in my body,” she claimed. “I’ve worked to bring communities together my entire life.”

But Saturday, dozens of Georgia pastors wrote in a letter accusing her of attacking “the Black Church and faith traditions for which we stand,” with her repeated attacks on her opponent’s faith.

Loeffler will face off in a Jan. 5 runoff against Democrat Raphael Warnock, the senior pastor at Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church. If Warnock wins, he will become the first Black senator in Georgia’s history.

Loeffler responded on Sunday with a racist tweet, claiming Warnock was just “playing the victim.”

She has previously scolded the Rev. Warnock for quoting the Bible to justify his pro-choice views on abortion, called him anti-veteran based on an out-of-context quote from a 2011 sermon, posed for a selfie with a prominent former Ku Klux Klan leader, and denounced anti-racism protesters in the Black Lives Matter movement as “Marxist.”

Contrary to Trump’s claim, Loeffler did not “rescue the U.S. economy.” Thanks in large part to Trump’s botched handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of Americans remain out of work and unemployment claims just soared to their highest levels in three months.

Millions of Americans continue to be out of work, mostly due to business closures caused by the pandemic. As of November, nearly 300,000 Georgians were unemployed.

Over the past five months, roughly 7.8 million Americans have fallen into poverty, according to data released last week by researchers at the University of Chicago and University Notre Dame — the largest ever recorded single-year increase.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.