A low-budget ad for a trailing candidate in West Virginia’s Republican primary for U.S. Senate is raising national eyebrows over two fleeting words.
“Cocaine Mitch.”
Don Blankenship, a former coal company executive, is currently polling third in that state’s contest, but is leading national headlines after referring to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as “Cocaine Mitch” in an ad where he speaks directly to the camera.
He does not explain the nickname or go into the topic any further.
So what’s he talking about?
The nickname refers to an incident in which the Colombian Coast Guard found 90 pounds of cocaine hidden in cargo containers aboard the Ping May, a ship owned by a company owned by McConnell’s father-in-law.
Drug cartels often smuggle their product overseas by loading them as legitimate cargo aboard unsuspecting carrier ships. Law enforcement found no reason to suspect the shipping company, or McConnell, knew what was in the containers.
A press release later issued by Blankenship reads:
Mitch McConnell and his family have extensive ties to China. His father-in-law who founded and owns a large Chinese shipping company has given Mitch and his wife millions of dollars over the years.
The company was implicated recently in smuggling cocaine from Colombia to Europe, hidden aboard a company ship carrying foreign coal was $7 million dollars of cocaine and that is why we’ve deemed him “Cocaine Mitch.”
Despite being a career politician for more than three decades, Mitch has become a millionaire while raising our national debt by 20 trillion dollars. The biggest jump in his wealth came from a multi-million dollar gift to his wife, Elaine Chao’s from her father, i.e. Foremost Maritime. The company uses ships chartered in Liberia, not America or China.
Ms. Chao’s father and sister actually joined the board in 2007 and 2008 of something called China State Shipbuilding Corporation, CSSC Holdings, which is a subsidiary of the largest defense contractor in China.
AAN Staff
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