Few things more plainly illustrate the MAGA movement’s worldview than its outrage at a campaign ad from Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders touting a “welfare-to-work requirement.” MAGA’s fury stems not from any issue with the policy but from the ad’s example of welfare fraud: a layabout named “Brad,” played by a young white actor. Conservatives including Jack Posobiec and Pastor Joel Webbon of Covenant Bible Church characterized the ad as Sanders’ — and thus the Republican Party’s — attack on young white men.
Jenna Ellis, who pleaded guilty to a felony charge related to efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia, wrote, “Don’t make the young white male (a voting demo the GOP needs) the enemy here.”
As defensible as it is to argue that members of every race and sex can and do cheat, people don’t want political commercials to challenge their thinking.
James Fishback, who ran a remarkably racist campaign against Byron Donalds, the Black U.S. representative who won the Republican nomination for governor in Florida, responded, “White men named Brad don’t typically commit welfare fraud. I’d recommend you start with the baby-momma with a BMW who just got back from her Carnival Cruise.”
Cryptocurrency venture capitalist Nic Carter said on X that the governor’s ad was “lying about the demographics of benefits cheats,” but he added that if that “is what it takes to end welfare fraud, I’m ok with it. We can pretend it’s young white dudes.”
Meanwhile, Sanders, a White House press secretary during President Donald Trump’s first term, made light of MAGA’s anger. Referring to the snack “Brad” scarfs in the commercial, she wrote, “Some critics online don’t like my welfare work requirement ad. Next thing you know they’ll say I should have used cookies instead of cheese balls. If you are able-bodied you should not collect welfare simply because you choose not to work. Period.”
One might think that if these particular conservatives are angry, then Sanders must have made a good ad. But given that she was trying to connect with conservative voters, it seems clear her ad is a failure. As defensible as it is to argue that members of every race and sex can and do cheat, people don’t want political commercials to challenge their thinking.
The purpose of political ads isn’t myth-busting but myth confirmation.
When it comes to this particular issue, Republicans have run against the “welfare queen” for at least 50 years. The specific term dates to the mid-1970s, from local news coverage of a notorious fraudster in Chicago who drove a Cadillac. Ronald Reagan, beginning with his failed 1976 presidential campaign, amplified and exaggerated the story to whip up animosity against welfare recipients. That first “welfare queen” was a racial chameleon whose birth certificate listed her as white. But in conservative mythology, the welfare queen — in keeping with the public perception of who receives welfare — is always Black.
A few years later, a young Clarence Thomas maligned his sister as “dependent” on welfare and told other Black conservatives in a speech that she was raising her children to stay stuck on welfare. His characterization was later debunked by a reporter who visited his sister’s home and learned that she had received public assistance for a few years as she cared for an elderly aunt who had had a stroke, that her shift as a hospital cook began as early as 3 a.m. and that she had a child in the military, another who was a carpenter and another who had just been laid off from a bakery.
For decades, Republicans have needed welfare fraud or welfare “dependence” to be a thing. They need it to justify cutting social services and safety net programs. Republicans have generally made Black women the face of welfare, welfare fraud and so-called welfare dependency, and work requirements are themselves an outgrowth of the misinformed belief that people generally abuse the system.
Many of the people attacking Sanders seem to think she failed in her duty to make Black people the face of welfare dependency, and they have been responding with numbers — some of them fanciful — about who gets benefits.
The poverty rate for Black Americans (20%) is more than twice the poverty rate for white Americans (9%), and the poverty rate for women (12.7%) is higher than the poverty rate for men (9.7%). Based on those numbers, it is not a scandal that there’s a greater percentage of Black women receiving public assistance than white men. But it also shouldn’t be a scandal that Sanders decided — for whatever reason — to release an ad mocking a young white man as too lazy to get a job.
Conservatives ought to think twice before demanding proportionate representation in political ads. If political ads were statistically accurate, we wouldn’t see any ads scaremongering about trans women taking over women’s sports. We wouldn’t see ads fearmongering about violent immigrants, since people born in the U.S. commit more crimes than immigrants. We’d never see a cheering Black woman staged behind Trump as he speaks, since the percentage of Black women who support Trump is in the single digits.
But facts don’t matter to the conservatives angry at the Arkansas governor’s ad. They’re mad she didn’t stick to the racist, sexist script that makes Black women the epitome of laziness. By creating an ad that antagonized her own side, Sanders saw her political instincts fail, but those who feel aggrieved are revealing something far more sinister about themselves.
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