A television ad showing a photo of a U.S. congresswoman being set ablaze aired during Thursday night’s Democratic debate, stirring a heated response online.
The 30-second ad was done by New Faces GOP PAC, a Republican-aligned committee run by former GOP congressional candidate Elizabeth Heng.
The ad opens with an image of Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which quickly bursts into flames.
“This is the face of socialism and ignorance,” Heng says as the fire burns a hole.
The congresswoman’s face burns away to reveal a black-and-white image of skulls.
“Does Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez know the horrors of socialism?” Heng asks.
Heng, a Cambodian-American, lost her bid for a U.S. House seat in California last year. According to the New Faces website, Heng is the daughter of Cambodian immigrants who escaped the communist rule of the Khmer Rouge during a period that saw the genocide of nearly two million Cambodians.
“My father was minutes from death in Cambodia before a forced marriage saved his life. That’s socialism. Forced obedience, starvation,” Heng says to the camera.
“Mine is a face of freedom. My skin is not white. I’m not outrageous, racist or socialist. I’m a Republican.”
The ad was not missed by Ocasio-Cortez, known commonly as AOC.
“Republicans are running TV ads setting pictures of me on fire to convince people they aren’t racist,” she tweeted.
“Life is weird!”
She later described the ad as a “love letter to the GOP’s white supremacist case.”
The ad, which aired on ABC, quickly drew criticism on social media, with the hashtag #BoycottABC picking up on Thursday night and trending into Friday.
However, it’s unclear how far the ad went, as the Wrap reported the commercial wasn’t featured in the Los Angeles broadcast of the debate.
Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet prompted kickback from Heng, who claimed the congresswoman supports “evil ideology.”
“I don’t care about AOC feelings — I care about stopping her lies about the lies of socialism,” she tweeted.
Ocasio-Cortez defended her “ideology,” calling the criticism GOP “hysteria.”
“If you also believe in a free and open democratic society, where people are treated humanely and don’t die over $300 insulin or needless war, they’ll call you a communist, too,” she wrote.
“Well, they don’t scare us or shake our focus.”
Ocasio-Cortez is a rookie congresswoman and no stranger to political attacks from the GOP.
She is one of four high-profile lawmakers known as “the Squad” who have regularly gone up against U.S. President Donald Trump.
Back in July, Trump tweeted that Ocasio-Cortez and the three other congresswomen, all women of colour, should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.”
All four congresswomen are U.S. citizens, with only one having been born outside of the country.