Sen. Tom Cotton’s (R-AR) reelection campaign has released an ad featuring video of his Democrat challenger, Hallie Shoffner, saying farmers would “trade five Americans” for “one undocumented immigrant,” comments her campaign subsequently defended.
The advertisement opens with political commentator Scott Jennings discussing Shoffner’s comments.
“There’s a Democrat candidate in Arkansas named Hallie Shoffner. She said she would trade five Americans for one illegal immigrant worker,” Jennings says.
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The advertisement then plays a video of Shoffner discussing immigrant farm labor during an appearance on Free Arkansas with host Andy McNeill.
“Every farmer will tell you, yeah, at one point we did or still do employ undocumented immigrants, and it’s absolutely ridiculous that these folks are being rounded up because they’re hardworking people. They’re some of the best people we know, and honestly, we’d trade five Americans for just one of them,” Shoffner says in the video.
The advertisement concludes with a narrator declaring, “Hallie Shoffner is for illegals. Tom Cotton is for you.”
Cotton’s campaign explained the reasoning behind the new advertisement:
Hallie Shoffner’s belief that one illegal immigrant is worth more than five Americans is so shocking you have to see it to believe it. That’s why we want every Arkansan to see the video before casting their vote this November. Arkansans deserve a Senator who will look out for their interests, not illegal aliens.
Cotton campaign spokesman James Arnold also addressed Breitbart News’s previous reporting on Shoffner’s comments. “Breitbart broke the original story about Hallie Shoffner’s now viral admission that she believes one illegal alien is worth more than five Americans. Their reporting further exposed her decision to stand by those remarks. Everyone in America now knows just how liberal she is thanks to their dogged exposure of her beliefs,” Arnold said.
Shoffner for Arkansas
Breitbart News reported September 16 that Shoffner discussed immigrant farm labor and immigration enforcement during an appearance on Free Arkansas. “And why is it that there’s no pathway for them to work here legally when they’re good workers? We pay them well. They spend money here. They have family here,” Shoffner said. Laura Loomer also highlighted a portion of the interview in which host Andy McNeill questioned why ICE agents needed to dress like “SEAL Team Six,” prompting Shoffner to say that the use of bulletproof vests “seems kind of performative to me.”
In a September 21 follow-up, Breitbart News reported that Shoffner’s campaign stood by her comments. Campaign manager Anna-Lee Pittman said, “So he spends his days combing through video clips of Hallie Shoffner to find any possible inelegant phrase or line that he can chop up to misrepresent an hour long conversation and present it with no context. In this case, Shoffner relayed a conversation she had with another farmer about challenges with labor.” The campaign did not clarify if Shoffner’s earlier statement that “we pay them well” referred to workers employed by her own farm.
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