Ana Navarro smacks down Rick Santorum's defense of Trump's hateful new ad: 'It's particularly obnoxious'

CNN's Ana Navarro and Rick Santorum battled it out on Thursday after Santorum tried to blame Democrats for the hateful and divisive messaging that has poisoned the 2018 mid-term elections and American politics. Navarro, meanwhile, reminded him repeatedly of last week's wave of mail bombs and massacre at a Pittsburgh synagogue, which many believe was inspired by Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric.

After watching Trump's latest ad, which CNN described as "the most racially charged national political ad in 30 years", Navarro said the Republicans "have no choice" about their closing message.

"It's being led by Donald Trump," she said. "What he's doing is he's using fear mongering, using scare tactics, demonizing immigrants. Just dividing Americans, pitting us one against the other." Navarro added that Democrats need to "draw an absolute contrast" by being "uplifting and uniting and inspirational."

Santorum countered that it was the Democrats who were spreading fear.

"You want to talk about dividing, they're out there saying Republicans are against people with pre-existing condition getting coverage," Santorum said, comparing the demonization of immigrants to health care policy differences. "The reality is the Democrats have been inciting fear on a variety of different subjects to motivate their voters for a long, long time, saying we're going to bring back Jim Crow." Santorum added that "both sides" were to blame.

But Navarro wasn't having it, saying "doubling down" on immigration hysteria in the wake of last week's domestic terror attacks was "particularly obnoxious".

"He's got to be happy as a clam right now, Donald Trump," Navarro said, pointing out Trump was changing the subject from the impact of his words to the migrant caravan. "Like he himself said a few days ago, he doesn't want to talk about 'the bomb stuff'. He wants it to be all about creating hysteria, creating angst and giving anxiety to the American people."

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