Biden campaign uses awkward Trump-Arpaio 'kiss' in digital ad targeting Latino voters

Donald Trump gave Democrats a golden moment when he embraced and then awkwardly kissed former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio near his ear at a town hall-style event in Phoenix last week.

“I don’t kiss men, but I kissed him," Trump said afterward.

The Biden campaign has turned the kiss into a digital campaign ad reminding voters of Arpaio’s history of racial profiling and misconduct, which many Latinos in the state recall as a time of fear.

In the ad, the Trump-Arpaio embrace plays on a loop at the bottom of the screen throughout. At the top, a sequence of news clips are displayed, starting with Arpaio saying in an interview: “Well you know, they call you KKK. They did me, I think it’s an honor, right?”

That is followed by clips of local news coverage of the tactics that led to legal troubles for Arpaio. “Immigration sweeps of Latino neighborhoods, workplace raids and the alleged targeting of Latinos in traffic stops landed Arpaio in court,” says a reporter in the first clip.

Two more clips take the viewer through allegations about the targeting of people with "brown skin," Arpaio's conviction on criminal contempt of court for ignoring a judge's order to stop singling out people based on their ethnicity and detaining them, and Trump’s eventual pardoning of Arpaio for that conviction.

The ad wraps up with the comment Trump made at the podium last Thursday about not kissing men.

The ad launched Saturday, between Trump events in Arizona on Thursday and in Nevada on Sunday whose purpose was partly to rally Latino supporters. The ad will run on social media platforms in those two states and Pennsylvania, the Biden campaign said.

The kiss is an example of“Trump’s airtight, long-standing relationship with America’s most