Facebook Blocks Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Ad, Stops Short of Removing Video

By Janko Roettgers

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Facebook is the latest company to reject a Trump campaign ad that has been decried as racist: The social networking giant suspended ad buys for the video Monday, with a spokesperson telling Variety that it violated its advertising policies.

“This ad violates ’s advertising policy against sensational content so we are rejecting it,” Facebook’s spokesperson said. “While the video is allowed to be posted on Facebook, it cannot receive paid distribution.”

This comes after the ad was rejected by CNN, NBCUniversal and Fox News Channel. CNN was first to decline airing the spot last week, saying in a statement that “this ad is racist.” NBC came under fire over the weekend for airing the ad during “Sunday Night Football” ; after the backlash, on Monday NBCU said it would pull the spot from rotation on its networks.

The ad in question falsely aimed to link a convicted killer of two police offers to the migrant caravan, and blamed Democrats for allowing him to be back into the country after a previous deportation — a claim that has also been called out as false .

Facebook did not remove the video altogether because it didn’t violate the company’s community standards. Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale reposted it on the platform Monday, and used his Twitter presence to claim that Facebook, along with the aforementioned news organizations had “chosen to stand with those illegally in this country.”