Palm Trees Come To Cleveland: FreedomWorks Uses Discredited Footage In New Ohio Anti-Union Ad

By Judd Legum

FreedomWorks, a right-wing group bankrolling the Tea Party, has a new advertisement it is planning to run in Ohio supporting Gov. John Kasich’s union-busting efforts. The advertisement tries to paint union protesters in Ohio as violent thugs. One problem: the ad uses footage from an old union protest in California.

How do we know? This is the same footage from California, which features palm trees, that was used by Bill O’Reilly just days ago. He used it to argue that the protesters in Wisconsin were violent thugs. Here’s the video evidence produced by TP’s Jeff Spross:

Bill O’Reilly’s stunt inspired Wisconsin protesters to mockingly carry inflatable palm trees in Madison:

The larger point is that these protests have been remarkably peaceful, which forces the right to distort the truth.

UPDATETabitha Hale of FreedomWorks responds via Twitter. She defends the ad, claiming it does not "indicate" that "it was Ohio footage." She makes this claim even though the ad is called "Save Ohio," it is scheduled to air in Ohio, it is defending Ohio Governor John Kasich, discusses Ohio union protesters and flashes the word "Ohio" on the screen five times.