On Monday, Democratic Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia released a shocking television campaign ad portraying Republican opponent Ed Gillespie’s supporters as truck-driving advocates of the Confederacy who also happen to be murderous, child-hunting racists.

Soon after the ad’s airing, it was revealed that the fictional account in the commercial actually paralleled a real-life incident in which a man ran down a Muslim girl who was wearing a hijab, kidnapped her, and murdered her with a baseball bat. The crime took place in Sterling, Virginia, but instead of a white redneck Islamophobe, the 17-year-old’s killer was (brace yourself for impact, Democrats) an illegal alien.

The jaw-dropping campaign ad, titled “American Nightmare,” follows the racist, stalking trek of a large pickup boasting a big Confederate flag and Gillespie bumper sticker, with a “Don’t Tread on Me” license plate. The vehicle chases down minority children, including a girl wearing a hijab, two young Hispanics, and a black boy. Incredibly, the voiceover asks:

“Is this what Donald Trump and Ed Gillespie mean by ‘the American Dream?'”

The real-life story turns out to be as political as the campaign ad: originally reported in the Washington Post under the illegal-immigrant-muting headline, “Killing of Muslim Teen Near Va. Mosque Stemmed from Road Rage, Police Say,” the paper emphasized the half of the story which fed its leftist narrative, playing up the victim’s minority status by displaying a photo of her wearing her hijab.

According to the article, the “construction worker from Sterling got into an argument with a teen on a bike” while she was headed to McDonald’s. He then “drove his car over a curb, scattering the group of as many as 15 teens. Then the illegal immigrant's harrassment turned to murder:

"He caught up with them a short time later in a parking lot and chased them with a baseball bat, striking 17-year-old Nabra Hassanen and then abducting her in his car…[He later] assaulted Nabra a second time, in Loudoun County, before dumping her body in a pond next to his apartment complex, where it was discovered about 3 p.m. on Sunday...The medical examiner ruled Monday that the girl died of blunt-force trauma to the head and neck.”

The abduction and slaying at first garnered national attention as a hate crime.  However, according to a Mediaite column:

“Once it was discovered that the murder was not a hate crime and the perpetrator was in the country illegally, the national media seemed to lose interest."

Regarding Monday's airing of the derivative, astonishingly incendiary Democratic campaign ad — produced, oddly enough, by the Latino Victory Fund — Ed Gillespie appeared on Fox & Friends Tuesday, commenting:

“I thought it was a sad day for Virginia, and this attack is not just an attack on my supporters -- who are good, decent, hard-working Virginians who love their neighbors -- it's an attack on all Virginians.  And the fact is that whether you disagree with people or not in Virginia, we believe in civil discourse, and this is a new low in politics here…A couple of [Democrats] condemned the ad…But outrageously, my opponent has embraced it, and it reveals the disdain not just for my supporters, but for all Virginians, frankly, who want to have a discussion about issues and policies in this election that I've been focused on.  And you know, all they want to do is smear people, and it's the wrong thing to do, and I have faith in my fellow Virginians that they see that very clearly."

When co-host Steve Doocy asked, “What does it say to you about the opposition that they would drop that ad a week before the election?” Gillespie replied: “It's clear they understand that this race is slipping away from them.”

Also slipping away from them is class.