Despite finishing last place in the West Virginia Republican primaries last week, Don Blankenship is still releasing advertisements attacking Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who funneled thousands of dollars into that race to oppose him.
In a new 60-second spot shared on Blankenship’s Facebook page over the weekend, the failed Senate candidate attacked McConnell for making light of Blankenship’s “cocaine Mitch” moniker for the majority leader.
“Cocaine Mitch’s family shipping business was caught with cocaine onboard one of their ships,” the narrator of the advertisement says, while the screen displays a photo of McConnell’s face on a boat surrounded by cocaine. “That’s not funny to families who have lost loved ones to cocaine overdose deaths, it’s only funny to those making money by shipping and selling cocaine.”
The advertisement implies that McConnell started the cocaine spectacle when his campaign tweeted out a picture of McConnell photoshopped onto a Netflix advertisement for “Narcos,” a show about cocaine drug lord Pablo Escobar. The meme features McConnell’s face superimposed over Escobar’s body, surrounded by white power that’s meant to depict cocaine.
However, Blankenship was first to make drug jokes to assail McConnell, releasing a different ad on Facebook earlier this month about how he planned to “ditch” “cocaine Mitch” if he were elected to the Senate. Blankenship later clarified that he was referencing reports that drugs were discovered on a shipping vessel owned by the family of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, McConnell’s wife.
McConnell was a vocal opponent of Blankenship’s senate bid, claiming the ex-coal baron was too controversial of a candidate to win the general election against Democratic incumbent Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV). Blankenship has made several racially charged comments in the past and is most known for serving a one-year sentence in prison for his role in failing to prevent a mine accident that kill 29 of his workers. Blankenship has claimed the prison-stint was orchestrated by the “deep state.”
