Tag Archives: Overtime

Is This Missouri Republican’s TV Spot the Most Racist Campaign Ad of 2024?

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 Jim Swift’s Overtime newsletter at The Bulwark, when I came across this item.

Meanwhile, in Missouri… Gubernatorial candidate Bill Eigel seems to have hired ad people similarly offensive and cringeworthy to Kelly Loeffler’s.

You gotta see it to believe it, Doc.

What the hell, right?

– GOPsmacked

Dear GS,

There is no bottom to that well.

As the redoubtable Charlie Sykes has noted, racism was once a recessive gene in the Republican Party. With the advent of Trumpism, it’s become the dominant one.

Exhibit Umpteen, via Joe Perticone’s Press Pass newsletter at The Bulwark, is the GOP’s mad rush to label Kamala Harris a “DEI hire.” After calling the roll of several House Republicans who led the charge, Perticone highlighted the verbal assault from this media lowlife.

Alec Lace, a podcast host and right wing commentator, brought things even lower. On Fox Business, he could not stop saying “DEI” (the repetitions making clear exactly what he meant by it) and suggested Harris has slept her way to her presumptive spot on the Democratic ticket:

There’s the DEI press secretary telling you that the DEI vice president is the future of the party here. And so the future looks kinda dim for the Democrats here, but this is no shocker, either. Kamala Harris—she’s the original “hawk tuah” girl, that’s the way she got where she is, and the party’s going downhill if it’s in her hands.

(Perticone provided this gloss for those of you keeping score at home: “Neither Fox host on the panel objected to Lace’s crass insults, which referenced a recent viral video in which a woman describes—well, we’ll just call it a sex act.”)

No bottom . . .

But back to the original question: Is Bill Eigel’s Translator spot the most racist campaign ad of the 2024 election cycle?

The Doc’s diagnosis: It’ll do until something even more vile comes along.

How Can an Ad Claim That Donald Trump ‘Couldn’t Be Hired at a Local Mall’?

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 Jim Swift’s Overtime newsletter from The Bulwark, when I came across this item about a new ad campaign from Republican Voters Against Trump.

No mall would hire Trump… So why would we make him President again? A new ad from our friends at RVAT airing on TV and online in battleground states.

I dunno, Doc – does that sound right to you? Donald Trump does have an awful lot of experience in sales.

– Mall Rat

Dear MR,

Yeah, the thing with Trump is, so much of what he’s sold during his career has been irregular.

Beyond that, the rest of his resumé is even more problematic, as this RVAT press release explains.

WASHINGTON – April 22, 2024 – Today Republican Voters Against Trump launched a new six-figure ad campaign as part of an ongoing $50 million campaign, highlighting Donald Trump’s 88 felony charges.

The ad uses first-person hidden-camera footage of a job applicant going to several stores and repeatedly being rejected after sharing that he has been indicted for stealing classified documents, paying hush money to porn stars, and attempting to overturn an election.

Here’s how that worked out.

The ad is scheduled to run nationally on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” and digitally in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Republican Voters Against Trump is yet another effort from the irrepressible Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark, impresario of The Focus Group Podcast, and founder of Republican Voters Against Trump/Republican Accountability Project.

Sarah Longwell is the undisputed Queen of Never Trumpers.

Ask for her by name.

Will Any Voters Really Care About Biden’s Ad Attacking Trump’s NATO Attack?

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 Jim Swift’s Overtime post at The Bulwark, when I came across this item.

Happy Friday! The Biden campaign hit Donald Trump with a new ad about NATO. It’s a little wonky, but still, compelling.

Really, Doc? Trump’s trashing of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is going to put a dent in his poll numbers when 91 felony charges, a sexual assault conviction, and an endless series of lies and grifts haven’t? Does that seem reasonable to you?

– Trump Stumped

Dear TS,

According to this New York Times report by Nicholas Nehamas, the Biden campaign “is running [this] digital ad in three states — Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — that have significant populations of voters with Eastern European roots.”

The ad notes that every president since Harry Truman has been a rock-solid supporter of NATO – except for Donald Trump, who wants to walk away from NATO and its Article 5 mutual defense pact. (The spot also notes that Article 5 has been invoked exactly one time: in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on America.)

Trump’s “you gotta pay” message to NATO members, the ad concludes, is shameful, weak, dangerous, and un-American. (It’s also the unofficial slogan of made mobsters, but why get technical about it. Not to mention Trump’s lifelong commitment to stiffing his own creditors.)

As NBC News White House correspondent Monica Alba writes, “[the] campaign is aiming to reach the more than 2.5 million Americans who identify as Polish, Finnish, Norwegian, Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian — all NATO countries that share a border with Russia.”

That doesn’t seem like much, until you break down Trump’s likely electoral math: About 30 to 35 percent of his voters are ride-or-die MAGA who are largely there for the cruelty and the crazy; then you’ve got maybe 10 percent of voters who mumble “something something something Dementia Joe.”

It’s the next four or five percent who will decide the 2024 presidential election.  This Biden ad might tell us whether Article 5 works for  ballots as well as bullets.

What’s With the ‘MAGA Mom’ (and Kids) Wielding Rifles in Her Campaign Ad?

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 Jim Swift’s Overtime newsletter in The Bulwark when I came across this note: “The strange thing about Dr. Oz… Stu Stevens on GOP ads.”

The link took me to a YouTube video that features former Obama comms guy Dan Pfeiffer interviewing veteran GOP media guru Stuart Stevens about some current campaign commercials from Republican candidates for federal office.

To be honest, Doc, I never got to the Mr. Oz spot (hey, right now he’s just a U.S. Senate wannabe in Pennsylvania, not a practicing physician) because I was stopped in my tracks by the ad for Mallory Staples, the self-proclaimed MAGA Mom seeking a Georgia Congressional seat.

Here’s the image from the ad that almost made my head explode.

What’s the deal, Doc – has fondling a firearm now become the cover charge for being a viable GOP candidate?

– Shot and a Chooser

Dear Shot,

It sure seems that way, doesn’t it?

For starters, here’s the full Mallory Staples spot.

As you say, she’s not the only GOP gunsel flaunting a firearm. Less than a week ago the Doc detailed the Shootout at the GOP Corral that U.S. Senate hopeful Jim Lamon is running in Arizona.

And then there are the recent Christmas cards from GOP incumbents who represent the Family Firearms Wing of the Republican party. Start with Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie.

That got an Xmas shoutout from Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert and her gun-toting kids.

You can expect this arms race to heat up like machine-gun bacon.in the months to come.

Good luck ducking it.