Tag Archives: MAGAts

Is Anyone Winning the Trump-DeSantis Advertising Slap Fight?

by doctorads

Well the Doc opened up the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.

Dear Dr. Ads,

There I was, minding my own business and reading Charlie Sykes’s Morning Shots at The Bulwark, when I came across this item about how routinely weak Republicans’ criticism of Donald Trump has been.

Let’s start with some stipulations: the criticisms of Trump from his fellow GOPers fall way short since they continue to skirt the main issue: his fundamental unfitness to hold any position of public trust ever again.

And, given Trump’s lead in the polls and the well-documented proclivities of the MAGA base, they are also probably ineffective. All points granted.

But it is still worth noting that Ron DeSantis has finally realized that he needs to punch back.

What’s the deal, Doc? I thought DeSantis was running as Trump without the baggage. Now he’s gonna whack the former president with a briefcase?

–  Sky Cop

Dear SC:

Unfortunately, you’ve stumbled into a proxy war between the former Cheeto in Chief and his former Mini-Me, both vying for the hearts and (small) minds of the MAGAts. This is what changed everything for Ron DeSantis, compliments of the Trumpy Super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc.

Here’s the transcript for those of you keeping score at home.

Ron DeSantis loves sticking his fingers where they don’t belong. And we’re not just talking about pudding. DeSantis has his dirty fingers all over senior entitlements, like cutting Medicare, slashing Social Security, and even raising our retirement age. Tell Ron DeSantis to keep his pudding fingers off our money. Oh, and get this man a spoon!

That finger in the eye has triggered a couple of responses from the pro-DeSantis Never Back Down Super PAC. The first volley, as Axios’s Erica Pandey reported, came in the form of “a small online buy for ‘Gun-Grabbing Trump,’ which was geotargeted to Indianapolis for the NRA convention. The ad juxtaposes Trump’s comments about the Second Amendment with clips of Democrats: “TRUMP AGREED WITH NANCY PELOSI,” etc.”

The spot essentially accuses Trump of sleeping with the Second Amendment enemies. Drive him nuts graf: “Trump cut and run like a coward. Trump the gun-grabber doesn’t deserve a second chance.”

Ouch.

Now comes Fight Democrats, Not Republicans, which Never Back Down launched on “Fox News Sunday.” It asks the question, “What happened to Donald Trump?”

So what, in turn, happened to DeSantis’s old rope-a-dope strategy? The Bulwark’s Sykes points to this piece by Puck’s Tara Palmeri.

It’s only been a few weeks since Jeff Roe and his band of fellow Ted Cruz alumni parachuted into Tallahassee to help reverse Ron DeSantis’s wilting political fortunes, and yet they’ve already picked at an uncomfortable wound in the governor’s tight, sensitive, and less experienced inner circle. Roe’s more seasoned crew, for one, has a far less sanguine view of DeSantis’s current Trump self-defense strategy. They believe that DeSantis can’t just shrug off the former president’s public attacks on him, which coalesce around the notion that he’s an establishment stooge. Trump’s invective may be juvenile but it’s clearly moving the needle on his polling and allowing the former president to craft DeSantis’s public image.

All that brings us back to to the original question: Is anyone winning this ad-fueled slap fight? Let’s go to the highly unscientific YouTube Index for possible answers.

MAGA Pac’s Pudding Fingers  21,000 views  71 likes

Never Back Down’s Gun-Grabbing Trump  9000 views  61 likes

Never Back Down’s Fight Democrats . . .  136,000 views  125 likes

The Doc’s diagnosis: Donald Trump’s cheeks sure seem redder.

Is a Trump-Aligned Super PAC Ad Lying About Ron DeSantis?

by doctorads

Well the Doc opened up the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.

Dear Dr. Ads,

There I was, minding my own business and checking out the news on MediaPost when I came across Wayne Friedman’s piece about a new ad campaign funded by a Donald Trump-supported Super PAC. It attacks Florida governor (and likely Trump presidential rival) Ron DeSantis for his voting record in Congress on Medicare and Social Security.

A Republican-backed TV commercial campaign is targeting Florida Governor and potential Presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, backed by Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” Super PAC . . .

The spot — called “Think You Know Ron DeSantis” — talks about how he has backed “deep cuts to social security and medicare” and says that when he was in Congress, DeSantis voted to raise the retirement age to 70. The bottom-line message, according to a voiceover, is that DeSantis “doesn’t share our values” and that “he is just not ready to be President.”

DeSantis is currently on a book tour saying he’s all about protecting Social Security and Medicare. What gives, Doc?

– Ron Conned?

Dear RC:

It is a fact well-established that Donald Trump and his merry band of remoras (a.k.a. suckerfish) are severely allergic to the truth (according to a Washington Post tally, the Cheeto in Chief alone made 30,573 false or misleading claims during his four years in office).

Against that backdrop . . .

The reported $1.5 million ad campaign (most of it spent on Fox News ads) claims that Ron DeSantis, while a congressman representing Florida’s 6th Congressional District from 2013 to 2018, “voted three separate times to cut Social Security . . . Worse, DeSantis voted to cut Medicare two times. DeSantis even voted to raise the retirement age to 70.” (You can see the spot here.)

So the question is: True? False? Alternative facts?

According to a PolitiFact piece by Yacob Reyes in the Tampa Bay Times last month, it’s not all that cut and dried.

In 2013, with Republicans controlling the House, DeSantis joined 103 Republicans on a failed resolution that called for raising the age to qualify for Medicare and Social Security to 70, according to a Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget analysis.

The measure also supported a transition of Medicare, a program funded by the federal government, to a premium support system, for which the federal government would designate a pot of money for each beneficiary to spend on a private insurance plan.

The resolution’s text stated the measure would have affected future beneficiaries; it says, “those in or near retirement will see no changes.”

A PolitFact piece by Amy Sherman five years ago, which addressed similar charges against DeSantis during Florida’s 2018 GOP gubernatorial primary, labeled them Half True:: “[The non-binding resolutions] were a cut in terms of the programs’ future growth relative to the baseline. But the goal of these resolutions was to persuade Congress to make changes to shore up these programs in the future to avoid steeper cuts down the road.”

Bottom line: Those votes cut no budgets, nor did they reduce seniors’ benefits.

Regardless, DeSantis is doing his best nowadays to rewrite his position on entitlement cuts, as the Tampa Bay Times piece noted.

“Look, I have more seniors here than just about anyone as a percentage,” DeSantis told Fox News’ Dana Perino on March 2. “You know, we’re not going to mess with Social Security as Republicans. I think that that’s pretty clear.”

(As if he didn’t represent seniors for the six years he was Florida’s 6th District congressman. But why get technical about it.)

What’s also pretty clear is that the Trumpiacs will keep touting half-truths about DeSantis as long as he remains a threat to the ex-president’s bid to regain the White House.

The Doc’s prescription: Just because in this instance the MAGAts have downshifted from outright lies to partial ones, we don’t recommend getting used to it.

Won’t Democrats Eventually Get Burned By Their Ads Boosting GOP Crazies?

by doctorads

Well the Doc opened up the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.

Dear Dr. Ads,

There I was, minding my own business and reading Charlie Sykes’s Morning Shots newsletter at The Bulwark, when I came across this item linking to a Lachlan Markay piece at Axios.

FFS. “Democrats boost right-wing challenger to GOP Trump foe.”

A new TV ad from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee portrays Republican John Gibbs as the true pro-Trump conservative in his effort to unseat Republican Rep. Peter Meijer (R-Mich.) — aligning with Gibbs’ own campaign messaging.

  • Trump endorsed Gibbs’ challenge after Meijer voted to impeach the former president over his role in fomenting the Jan. 6 Capitol siege…

Be smart: The spot is couched as an attack ad, saying “the Gibbs-Trump agenda is too conservative for West Michigan.”

  • Despite the framing, it hits on precisely the issues any Trump-backed Republican would want to be elevated before a primary contest.

What the hell, Doc – does this seem like a prescription for victory in November?

– Dimocrat Watcher

Dear Watcher,

The Doc has been on this gambit by Democrats like Brown on Williamson for the past two months (see here and here).

But there are plenty of others in the punditocracy also dissecting it.

Let’s begin with the ad “attacking” John Gibbs that Lachlan Markay noted in his Axios piece.

The Bulwark’s eminently sane and always readable Jonathan V. Last had this to say about that spot.

Here are the relevant facts:

  • Gibbs is an insane conspiracy theorist—Hillary does Satanic rituals!—who is manifestly unfit for office.
  • Gibbs should lose this primary. So the add serves no “preparing the ground for the general” function.
  • The ad will help Gibbs because he’s struggling with name ID and hasn’t been able to run his own ads.
  • Again: Meijer is one of the ten Republican House members who voted to impeach Trump.

JVL’s conclusion: “[Going] into a race purely in the hopes that maybe the insane person will pull an upset over Meijer is not just foolish and dishonorable, but dangerous, too . . . This is the bad kind of boosting. The kind that the DCCC absolutely should not be doing.”

Then again, consider the gubernatorial race in Maryland, where the Democratic Governors Association poured over a million dollars into promoting Republican candidate Dan Cox, who, according to Vanity Fair’s Chris Smith, “pushed for Donald Trump to seize voting machines in the month after the 2020 presidential election, and . . . pals around with QAnon supporters.”

“It’s crazy like a fox,” says Cornell Belcher, a strategist who worked on both of Barack Obama’s winning presidential campaigns. “If you can impact the odds of winning on the front end, it’s hard to argue with doing it. If I have the ability to run against someone who I know is going to be the weaker opponent, I shouldn’t do that? That’s la-la land shit. The likelihood that Maryland will go Republican in November is a lot less today than it would have been if the Hogan-like candidate had prevailed in that primary.”

The jury’s still out, however, at the Jan. 6 Committee, as Alayna Treene noted in Axios Sneak Peek.

Representative sample:

Between the lines: Public backlash intensified yesterday when it emerged that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is boosting an election denier in his primary against Rep. Peter Meijer (R-Mich.) — one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

  • Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), the chair of the DCCC, said on MSNBC this morning: “If you’re talking about trying to pick your opponent, you might see us do that, sure. And I think sometimes it does make sense.”

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee, told Axios: “No party, Democrat or Republican, should be promoting candidates who perpetuate lies about the 2020 election and try to undermine our democracy.”

Karma being the corkscrew that it is, there’s a non-zero chance that at least one of the MAGAts Democrats have been boosting – call the roll: Doug Mastriano in the Pennsylvania gubernatorial race; Darren Bailey in the Illinois governor’s race; John Gibbs; Dan Cox – will squeak through in November.

As the feller says, lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.

Flea powder sold separately.

Why Is a Missouri Senate Candidate Issuing ‘RINO Hunting Permits’?

by doctorads

Well the Doc opened up the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.

Dear Dr. Ads,

There I was, minding my own business and checking out CNN’s Reliable Sources nightly newsletter, when I came across this item.

Wait, what? This guy is encouraging Missouri voters to hunt down Republicans who aren’t MAGAts? This is really a most dangerous game – don’t you think, Doc?

– Rinoblasty

Dear Rinoblasty,

Yeah – Eric Greitens: rhymes with frightens.

Here’s the ad.

Not surprisingly, the spot has gone over like the metric system in normie circles, as the Reliable Sources newsletter noted.

Missouri news outlets did not mince words about Monday’s new campaign video from Republican U.S. Senate candidate Eric Greitens. “Gun-wielding Greitens releases violent ad targeting other Republicans,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch said. An article by the Kansas City Star was even more blunt, calling it “Greitens’ people-hunting video.”  . . .

Greitens is not a fringe candidate. He is the disgraced former governor of the state. As Jake Tapper said on CNN, “You would think a candidate who has been accused of spousal and child abuse by his ex-wife… might consider a less violent appeal to voters.” His guest S.E. Cupp pointed out that Greitens is “leaning in” to the controversy, “very smugly promoting it,” even though the ad is “crazy, creepy and chilling.”

As the Doc has chronicled on several occasions, fondling firearms is now the two-drink minimum for red-state GOP candidates (see here and here). Greitens, however, is taking the gun gambit to a new, and lethal, low.

Remarkably, there’s nothing local broadcasters can do to stop him, given federal regulation of the public airwaves. This piece by Jerry Carnes at Fox54 provides details.

When it comes to qualified candidates who are on the ballot for federal office, television stations can not refuse their ads for any reason, including content.

According to Federal Communications Commission laws, stations can’t edit or censor.

“They have to take that ad, and the network is not liable for airing that even if it’s potentially slanderous or libelous,” explains Joseph Watson, Professor of Public Affairs Communications, Advertising & Public Relations at the University of Georgia’s Grady School of Journalism.

Slanderous, libelous . . . or murderous, apparently.

Greg Greitens is the GOP’s ultimate Accessory Before the Fact. But we’re guessing he’s not the only GOP candidate who’ll trigger some Squid Games karma before the 2022 elections are over.