‘Some of you look a little more Asian to me,’ Angle tells Hispanic kids

Sharron Angle, Nevada’s Tea Party-backed Republican candidate for US Senate, told Hispanic schoolchildren that Mexican men in her ad may not actually be Latinos, and implied “terrorists” are coming to the US illegally from Canada.

The spot, called “Thanks Pal,” attacks her opponent, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), for allegedly helping undocumented immigrants come to the United States and failing to enforce the border. An image of three dark-skinned men with menacing looks appears alongside the caption “Illegal Aliens.”

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“I’m not sure that those are Latinos in that commercial,” Angle tells the students in a private speech, video footage of which was obtained by The Associated Press. “What it is, is a fence and there are people coming across that fence.”

The men in the ad are discernibly Latinos. According to the photographer who took the image, the men were Mexicans living in Altar, Mexico, not unauthorized immigrants to the United States.

Angle’s speech gets even stranger.

“What we know is that our northern border is where the terrorists came through,” Angle said. “That’s the most porous border that we have. We cannot allow terrorists, we cannot allow anyone to come across our border if we don’t know why they’re coming. So, we have to secure all of our borders and that’s what that was about, is border security.”

The “northern border” could only mean Canada, which is not generally considered a hotbed for anti-American terrorist activity. Equally curious is the implication that undocumented immigrants from Mexico may be “terrorists.”

The Las Vegas Sun’s Jon Ralston, Nevada’s top political reporter, accuses Angle of being a “revisionist historian” and mocks her as being incredulously dishonest. “New Angle campaign slogan: If you say it, people may believe it,” he jests.

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Update: Ralton obtains more video of Angle’s speech and finds that she told the Hispanic schoolchildren — all of them were Hispanic, he reports — that some of them “look a little more Asian” to her than Latino.

“So that’s what we want is a secure and sovereign nation and, you know, I don’t know that all of you are Latino. Some of you look a little more Asian to me,” Angle said. “I don’t know that. What we know, what we know about ourselves is that we are a melting pot in this country. My grandchildren are evidence of that. I’m evidence of that. I’ve been called the first Asian legislator in our Nevada State Assembly.”

This video, obtained by AP, was uploaded by The Las Vegas Sun Oct. 17, 2010.