Eric Hovde Campaign Announcement - Photo by Mark Hoffman of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
WAUSAU, WI (WSAU) – Newly announced U.S. Senate Candidate Eric Hovde went viral on Tuesday night after a post on X depicted him saying he understood the issue of immigration due to having homes in South American countries.
According to the Federalist, the Heartland Signal, a Chicago-based political news outlet, published a 44-second excerpt from Hovde’s announcement speech in which he addressed the problem at the US southern border.
“It’s not just a humanitarian crisis for our country,” Hovde said. “But do you know how many lives are lost on that journey to get here? How many people’s life savings have been wiped out by the human trafficking cartels? And they’ve lost 100,000 children that they can’t account for.”
“Let me assure you,” Hovde added, “more than a few of them have ended up being sexually trafficked. I know this all too well. My brother and I have homes all over the world, and we have three in Central America that deal with issues like this.”
These comments were seen in their post by more than 383,000 users, which was captioned “Hovde says he understands the tragedy of children being trafficked through Central America because he owns three homes there.”
The platform later attached a “Community Note” to the post to offer accurate context, saying, “‘Hovde Homes’ are shelters the Hovde Foundation has built around the world to support children, including those who have been trafficked,” the note reads. “They are not residential homes, as this post suggests.”
https://twitter.com/HeartlandSignal/status/1760071147796759013?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1760071147796759013%7Ctwgr%5Ead6f124d24e2ab5ac7e1abdfd32b301c057f2885%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fthefederalist.com%2F2024%2F02%2F21%2Fdark-money-group-peddles-viral-disinformation-to-frame-gop-senate-candidate-as-clueless-elite%2F
The Heartland Signal did issue a correction to their post after the Note was posted, saying, “While not mentioned in his speech, Hovde appears to be referring to his charitable foundation, Hovde Homes.”
The Federalist reports that The Heartland Signal was recently purchased by Future Now Action, a left-wing advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., that says in its mission statement that its goal is to “promote Democratic state-level candidates that will support Future Now’s environmentalist agenda and help achieve Democratic majorities.”
Hovde last ran for the seat back in 2012 and was defeated in the Republican primary by former Gov. Tommy Thompson, who went on to lose to Tammy Baldwin in the general election by 5 percentage points.
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