WASHINGTON (Reuters) - US President Donald Trump faced a barrage of vehement criticism on Thursday over a declaration linking Democrats and immigrants to violent crime, and even some of his fellow Republicans criticized him as the most politically-charged political declaration in three decades.
"This announcement and your full acceptance of it are your own and your everlasting heritage in American history books," wrote the former Republican president of Florida, Al Cardenas, on Twitter.
The e-mail includes photos from a courtroom of Luis Bracamontis, an illegal immigrant from Mexico convicted in 2014 of killing two police officers in Sacramento, Calif., Saying in broken English he would kill more officers.
The ad turns between Bracamontes and scenes of immigrants, a possible reference to a convoy of up to 3,000 Central Americans heading across southern Mexico en route to the US border.
"Who else would allow the Democrats to enter?" Trump asked on Twitter late on Wednesday.
"President Donald J. Trump and the Republicans are making America safe again," he said, quoting Trump's slogan: "Let's make America great again."
US media reported Trump's campaign to run for a new term paid for the announcement, while the campaign has yet to respond to a request for suspension.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez described the announcement as "the most distracting and divisive Donald in the world," as he described it in an interview with CNN as "calling for fear."
Cardenas Trump called it "divisive and the worst social poison our country has been afflicted in decades."
