1. Yesterday, Facebook lifted its blanket political advertising ban, allowing ads involving the Georgia runoff.

Today, American Crossroads, Karl Rove's Super PAC, is using Facebook to run an outrageously dishonest attack on Raphael Warnock.

Follow along if interested.

2. The ad starts off with a typical attack alleging that Warnock "defended" Jeremiah Wright.

Loeffler has been saying this throughout the campaign and Politifact rated it "mostly false."

But American Crossroads takes things to a whole new level https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/dec/01/kelly-loeffler/warnock-defended-jeremiah-wrights-damning-mistreat/

3. Wright is deemed toxic because he once said in a sermon "God Damn America."

The American Crossroad ad tells Georgians that Raphael Warnock ALSO SAID GOD DAMN AMERICA

It shows a clip of him saying it.

But it's just brutally dishonest.

4. The American Crossroads ad shows a few seconds from a speech Warnock delivered on 7/11/13 at the Chautauqua institution.

@tesszeeks helped me track down the audio. Warnock was NOT expressing his own views when he said "God Damn America." He's QUOTING WRIGHT.

5. Here's Warnock's full quote: "Extracted from its theological and rhetorical context and looped to the point of ad nauseam was the most provocative phrase 'God Damn America'"

The ad claims this means Warnock "He repeated the same anti-American hate himself"

FALSE

6. It's really impossible to overstate just how dishonest this ad is. It's like Kelly Loeffler going on Fox News and saying: "Jerimiah Wright said 'God Damn America.'"

And then running an ad attacking Kelly Loeffler for saying "God Damn American"

7. Under Facebook's rules, Super PACs like American Crossroads can't run false ads. But Facebook will only take it down if one of their third party fact checkers rate this claim as false. And of course no one has because the are just a handful of fact checkers for all of Facebook

8. I'll note that while American Crossroads is run by Karl Rove and his associates, this cycle it is almost entirely financed by Mitch McConnell, through his Super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund

9. UPDATE: Lead Stories, one of Facebook's official fact checking partners, has reviewed this ad and come to the same conclusion that it misleads voters because it lacks context

https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2020/12/fact-check-political-ad-that-shows-raphael-warnock-saying-god-damn-america-is-not-true-to-life.html

10. The American Crossroads ad, however, is still up on Facebook. In fact, American Crossroads has launched several other versions of the same ad.

This is likely because Lead Stories rated it as "missing context" instead of "false." It should have been rated false.