The “joke” in the ad is that the “C” stands for “communist” — not what it more commonly stands for in “c-word.” (The C doesn’t customarily stand for “communist” the same way the N in the “n-word” doesn’t stand for “numbskull” or “Neoplatonist.”)
But the “c-word” joke in the ad presumably struck somebody as unhelpful at the RNC or elsewhere among the MAGA powers-that-be, and the ad — a product of billionaire MAGA adherent Elon Musk‘s America PAC — was removed from X after spending a weekend on the platform.
But the ad remains viewable (at the time of publication) on the America PAC account on Facebook, where the distribution algorithm is less Musk-centric and where fewer people have seen it.
Reporting the ad’s persistence on Facebook, independent journalist Judd Legum’s newsletter characterized it as “the most misogynistic ad in the history of politics.”
The ad’s narrator intones: “Kamala Harris is a C-word. You heard that right. A big ole C-word. In fact, all of the other C-words think she’s the biggest C-word of them all.” The ad ends with the suggestion that Harris is the “C-word America can’t afford.”
Use of the generally offensive c-word in an ostensibly joking way isn’t exclusive to the America PAC ad.
After comedian Tony Hinchcliffe received blowback for his Madison Square Garden Trump rally appearance featuring a controversial joke about Puerto Rico being a “floating island of garbage,” there were reports that Hinchcliffe had been edited beforehand and had agreed to take out a line that referred to Harris with the same description featured in the America PAC ad.
The Bulwark reported: “Campaign staffers had asked all speakers to submit drafts of their speeches ahead of time—before they were loaded into the teleprompter—according to the aforementioned sources. Once the objectionable [c-expletive] joke was spotted, the sources said, a staffer asked Hinchcliffe to strike it. He complied.”
[NOTE: Defenders of both Hinchcliffe and the c-word ad say those taking offense at the language are too easily offended.]
The report was notable for both its assertion that the c-word is prevalent in MAGA circles as a Harris slur, and also because of the implication that Hinchcliffe’s Puerto Rico joke was not considered objectionable by the staffers who vetted the speech and allegedly excised the c-word.