Democratic groups to spend millions hitting Trump over coronavirus response
A Democratic super PAC said Tuesday it would spend $5 million on digital advertising flaying President Trump for his response to the novel coronavirus, one of several groups that planned to devote resources to this type of messaging.
The campaign from Pacronym — a political action committee affiliated with the nonprofit group Acronym — represents the first major pivot to coronavirus-related advertising fewer than 250 days from the election.
The new advertising from Pacronym will run across digital platforms, including Facebook and Google, and will target audiences in five states — Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Arizona.
Ads will promote news articles and fact-checks about the response to the pandemic. And the posts will push videos and other material highlighting actions taken by Trump affecting the country’s preparedness, as well as the president’s public comments as he responded to the pandemic. Already the group has run a handful of ads about the lack of tests for the novel virus.
Other groups are also already involved:
American Bridge — which has been running a coronavirus-related advertisement in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — said it would soon cut an additional ad on “Trump’s incompetence,” including “clips of Trump himself downplaying the crisis.”
(American Bridge has been running anti-Trump ads for a while now, including New ads show Trump supporters saying they made a mistake.)
Dem groups are also targeting down-ballot races:
Additional groups were seeking to tie the issue to critical Senate races. The liberal group Protect Our Care has been running an ad this month against Montana Sen. Steve Daines (R) that connects his opposition to the Affordable Care Act to the coronavirus outbreak.
There are some ethical issues involved, as the groups admit, in running attack ads against the president in the middle of a crisis, but Pacronym says they are being careful to weigh that factor, and they are constantly checking that they do not provide any misinformation.
I haven’t seen any of the ads, but I’m sure they will include some of Trump’s immortal lines such as “I’m not responsible for any of that” and that state governors were on their own. And of course clips of Trump saying one thing about COVID-19 one day spliced with another clip of him saying the opposite; I’d end that one with Susan Collins and Bernie Sanders telling him to shut up already.
These ads do write themselves. And it looks like Dems are writing them.