Mitch McConnell Runs YouTube Ads Singling Out Jewish Donors
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has been running YouTube advertisements to fundraise for his reelection campaign. As Forbes journalist Andrew Solender pointed out, one advertisement in particular leaned heavily on antisemitic tropes about Jews and money.
In the ad, McConnell tells viewers that his opponents “have liberal billionaires like George Soros and Mike Bloomberg, but I have you” before asking viewers to donate money to help maintain a Republican majority in the Senate.
Parker Molloy of Media Matters pointed out that Bloomberg had been the 8th largest spender in the 2020 election cycle, while Soros had been the 26th largest spender. McConnell’s decision to single out Bloomberg and Soros, therefore, was not about who was actually spending the most in the election. It was to single out ‘boogeymen’ the conservative movement has made recognizable — and it is not a coincidence that those people happen to be Jews.
The idea of rich and manipulative Jews seeking to control governments and industries is an age-old antisemitic trope. Right-wing politicians, pundits, and special interest groups have regularly invoked Soros and Bloomberg — as well as Tom Steyer, whose father was Jewish — for years, particularly during elections. In 2018, for example, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) infamously suggested that Bloomberg, Soros, and Steyer were trying to “buy” the election. That same year, the NRCC ran advertisements on behalf of now-Congressman Jim Hagedorn (R-MN) that presented Soros as an evil figure who paid “left-wing mobs” to “riot in the streets.”
The YouTube advertisement was not the first time McConnell used antisemitic tropes for political gain. During a debate with his Democratic challenger, Amy McGrath, McConnell used a similar trope about Jewish control