Tag Archives: Washington Post

Could the New TV Spots Attacking TikTok Mean Its Time May Be Running Out?

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 scrolling through Punchbowl New AM, when I came across this item about two new ad campaigns targeting TikTok for its ties to the Chinese government and its harmful effects on users.

The fight over banning TikTok, long confined to congressional committees, federal boards and online screeds, has now moved to television screens across the country.

Two entities are running ads about the perceived danger of the popular social media app, which is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company.

One spot accuses the platform of promoting eating disorders and “glorifying self-harm.” The other ad says that the Zhang Fuping, the vice president of ByteDance and a member of the Chinese Communist Party, “controls what 170 million Americans think.”

What do you think, Doc – those ads gonna work?

– TikToxic

Dear TT,

Let’s do the math, shall we?

National Review’s James Lynch reports that the two groups – The American Parents Coalition and State Armor Action – will spend roughly $2 million between them on their TikTok knock.

Meanwhile, according to this piece by the Washington Post’s Cristiano Lima-Strong, Jacob Bogage and Aaron Schaffer, “TikTok and ByteDance’s spending on federal lobbying has risen dramatically as scrutiny over their ties to China has grown in Washington. They spent less than $300,000 in 2019 but more than $20 million in the years since, according to a review of federal lobbying disclosure forms.”

Kind of a mismatch, yeah?

Then again, public opinion still counts for something, so maybe these spots will actually break through.

Then again again, the public opinion that matters most might come from the teen and tween children of Congressional members, as Natalie Andrews details in the Wall Street Journal.

WASHINGTON—As members of Congress consider a crackdown on TikTok, many have faced lobbying from some of their most vocal constituents: their own children.

“She was initially up in arms about the whole thing, ‘you can’t do that,’” says Rep. Josh Gottheimer, (D., N.J.) of his daughter.

The 14-year-old was worried her friends would be mad about her dad’s actions. He voted with the majority of the House earlier this month to force TikTok to divest from its Chinese-controlled parent Bytedance or be banned in the U.S.

Now the matter has moved over to the Senate—where lawmakers also have to contend with their in-house critics . . .

Democratic Sen. John Fetterman was headed back to Pennsylvania after the House voted on the legislation when his tween daughter lobbied him.

“I’m driving home and she sent me some texts, and it was ‘please don’t destroy TikTok, I’m going to get bullied,’” he recalls.

The Doc’s diagnosis: We’ll find out soon who’s going to ByteDance to whose tune. And who’s just going to bite.

Stay tuned.

Why Can’t Democrats Quit Canoodling With Trumpy GOP Candidates?

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 Zachary Basu’s post at Axios Sneak Peek, when I came across this item about “Ohio’s strange bedfellows.”

Former President Trump and meddling Democrats are both scrambling to get their preferred Republican candidate — businessman Bernie Moreno — over the finish line in Tuesday’s Senate GOP primary in Ohio, Axios’ Stephen Neukam reports.

Why it matters: Democrats view Moreno as the weakest general election opponent for vulnerable Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). Moreno is also the only Trump-backed Senate candidate at risk of losing in a GOP primary — a potentially embarrassing blow to the former president . . .

The intrigue: Duty and Country PAC, a group tied to Senate Democrats, is spending $2.5 million on a TV ad highlighting Moreno’s ties to Trump — seeking to boost him with the GOP’s conservative base.

What the hell, Doc – why do Democrats (lookin’ at you, Adam Schiff) keep pumping up Republican candidates they think will be easy pickings in a general election?

– GOPsmacked Voter

Dear GV,

As Democratic candidates and their allies keep demonstrating in political races nowadays, the only difference between an opponent and a proponent is a little pr.

The latest case in point: The new TV spot from Duty and Country PAC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Chuck Schumer’s Senate Majority PAC. The latter group,  according to this piece by the Washington Post’s Michael Scherer, has reserved $239 million in ads to defend seats in seven states.

Duty and Country’s mash note to Bernie Moreno in the Ohio GOP Senate primary, meanwhile, is more ham-handed than a  Hormel worker. The video has been pulled from YouTube for some reason, but you can view the spot at AdMo. Here’s the transcript.

MAGA Republican Bernie Moreno is too conservative for Ohio. In Washington, Moreno would do Donald Trump’s bidding. That’s why Trump endorsed Moreno, calling him exactly the type of MAGA fighter that we need in the United States Senate. Moreno would lead the charge to enact Trump’s MAGA agenda to repeal Obamacare and institute a national ban on abortion. Donald Trump needs Bernie Marino. Ohio doesn’t. Duty and Country is responsible for the content of this ad.

Of course, such bank-shot campaigns don’t always pay off. In the 2022 election cycle, according to this NPR piece by Bill Chappell, “not all of the far-right candidates supported by Democratic groups won their primary races — in fact, far from it. In September, an analysis by The Washington Post found that seven of 13 Democrat-backed Republican candidates lost their primaries after having more than a combined $12 million spent on their behalf.”

One campaign that might have worked too well, on the other hand, is Adam Schiff’s $11 million wet kiss to former pro baseball player Steve Garvey, the Republican candidate in California’s U.S. Senate primary. As Katy Grimes reports in California Globe, Garvey was leading Schiff in the jungle primary by 254,667 votes as of yesterday afternoon.

Live and let learn, that’s the Doc’s slogan.

Did Adam Schiff’s Ad Strategy Really ‘Rig’ The California Senate Primary?

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 poking around Xitter, when I came across this tweet in “semi-recovered lawyer” George Conway’s feed.

@Out5p0ken elaborated in a reply:”Seriously, wtf and let’s all thank her for giving away a House seat and then calling the election rigged and not congratulating Schiff. Deplorable.”

What’s the deal here, Doc. Just sour grapes? Or something more rigorous?

– Katie Didn’t

Dear KD,

Katie Porter is upset because, as Joe Perticone reported in The Bulwark, “[Adam] Schiff’s campaign and his allies have shelled out millions of dollars to boost [Republican candidate Steve] Garvey’s bid and box out the other Democrats” in California’s jungle primary for the seat vacated by the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Here’s a representative sample of the knee-buckling $11 million worth of ads the Schiff forces ran teeing up the former pro baseball player for GOP voters.

Post-primary, Porter cried foul, as The Daily Beast’s Matt Lewis noted.

In a tweet that has evoked controversy, Porter complained that her campaign had to withstand “3 to 1 in TV spending and an onslaught of billionaires spending millions to rig this election.”

And in a weak-sauce follow-up statement meant to clarify her tweet, Porter explained that “rigged” means “manipulated by dishonest means”—and that billionaires spending money to defeat her constitutes “dishonest means to manipulate an outcome.”

Some of Porter’s supporters protested Schiff’s strategy as “sexist and cynical” in pushing her aside for another male candidate. But that wasn’t the only factor in holding Porter to a disappointing 14% of the primary vote. As Jill Cowan reported in the New York Times, “[i]n the final weeks of the campaign, a cryptocurrency super PAC spent millions on ads attacking Ms. Porter, who has supported more regulations on the industry and has rebuked various corporate leaders in congressional hearings.”

Beyond that, there’s this inconvenient fact, which Maeve Reston pointed out in the Washington Post: “[T]o hold down Garvey’s support, Porter . . . countered with similar tactics — running at least a half-million dollars in ads raising the profile of another long-shot GOP Senate contender, Eric Early.”

Sauce for the gander, anyone?

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.

Are Any GOP Campaign Ads This Year *Not* Lying to Voters?

by doctorads

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

Dear Dr. Ads,

There I was, minding my own business and reading Punchbowl News, when I came across this item by Max Cohen.

Voters in the country’s most competitive House and Senate races face a deluge of Republican ads focusing on the dubious claim that Democrats have empowered the IRS to hire an army of 87,000 new agents to target the middle class.

Since Aug. 1, Republican candidates and groups have spent more than $12 million on roughly 24,000 airings of ads warning of a massive influx of IRS agents, according to an AdImpact analysis. The spots are targeting vulnerable Senate Democratic incumbents in Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and New Hampshire, as well as toss-up House races from Michigan to Kansas.

But at the heart of the attack ads is an argument the IRS itself says is “inaccurate.” Experts say that the IRS is mainly seeking to replenish its aging workforce and beef up its outdated tech, not hound average Americans.

What the hell, Doc – all these Republican grifters just get to lie their way into office?

– GOPsmacked

Dear Smacked,

That seems to be the general drift of this election cycle. Then again, $12 million is lunch money in the big scheme of this year’s U.S. Senate races, as evidenced by this Katherine Huggins piece at MarketWatch.

Outside spending is pouring into the 2022 Senate races, as Democratic control of the chamber hangs in flux.

Nearly $450 million in outside spending has been spent on Senate races so far this cycle, according to OpenSecrets, a watchdog group that tracks money in politics. Just over 80% of that sum, or about $360 million, went to the 10 races deemed competitive by Cook Political Report.

Lunch money or not, $12 million in lying ads is not nothing, as Punchbowl News points out, especially when it puts falsehoods like these on the public radar screen

→ Senate Leadership Fund, the GOP super PAC aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, accused Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) of voting “yes to 87,000 new IRS employees to audit the middle class.”

→ SLF also assailed Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) for his vote “to hire 87,000 new IRS employees to dig even deeper in middle class pockets.”

None of that is true. Here’s what is true: “The IRS expects up to 50,000 of its current 80,000 employees to retire in the next five years. And despite facing a far broader set of responsibilities, the agency is operating with far fewer employees than it was 30 years ago, when the IRS boasted 117,000 workers.”

So most of the new hires will simply replace the departing staffers. Beyond that, the IRS is about as technologically sophisticated as Donald Trump, so a bunch of the other new hires will be tech geeks, not jack-booted tax auditors.

The GOP’s deceptive campaign ads don’t stop there, though, as Judd Legum reported in his Popular Information newsletter.

One of the challenges of attacking any Democratic incumbent on crime is identifying a basis for the attack. Democrats have controlled Congress for two years and, for better or worse, have not done anything to reform the criminal justice system or reduce the power of law enforcement. Both the Senate and House have passed legislation, the Invest to Protect Act, that would provide tens of millions of additional funding to local police departments.

That didn’t stop Republican candidates and the groups that support them from running 53,000 commercials on crime during the first three weeks of September. Over the same time period, “50 percent of all Republican online ads in battleground states…focused on policing and safety.”

Cue Mitch McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund, which “is running ads claiming that [Georgia Senator Raphael] Warnock “chose felons over Georgia families.”

As Legum notes, however, the windfall for felons was a bipartisan gift.

The ad claims that Warnock voted “to send almost a billion in COVID relief checks to hundreds of thousands of convicted criminals in prison.” There are similar attack ads currently being run against Democratic Senate candidates in Ohio and Florida. And the NRSC has made the same claim against Democratic Senate candidates in New Hampshire, Arizona, and Nevada.

These ads, however, are extremely deceptive. If Democrats “chose felons” over law-abiding families, so did almost every incumbent Republican Senator and former President Trump.

To top off the general GOP mendacity, we have Amy Gardner’s piece in today’s Washington Post.

A majority of GOP nominees — 299 in all — deny the 2020 election results

Experts say their dominance in the party poses a threat to the country’s democratic principles and jeopardizes the integrity of future votes

A majority of Republican nominees on the ballot this November for the House, Senate and key statewide offices — 299 in all — have denied or questioned the outcome of the last presidential election, according to a Washington Post analysis.

Candidates who have challenged or refused to accept Joe Biden’s victory are running in every region of the country and in nearly every state. Republican voters in four states nominated election deniers in all federal and statewide races The Post examined.

The worst part? “Although some are running in heavily Democratic areas and are expected to lose, most of the election deniers nominated are likely to win: Of the nearly 300 on the ballot, 174 are running for safely Republican seats. Another 51 will appear on the ballot in tightly contested races.”

The Post piece also includes a helpful Election Denier Finder.

The 2022 GOP LieAthon: Ask for it by name!

Exactly How Dopey Does Ron DeSantis Look in His ‘Top Gov’ TV Spot?

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 Politico Playbook, when I came across this item: “HIGHWAY TO THE DANGER ZONE — ‘New DeSantis fighter jet ad conjures 1988 Dukakis tank debacle,’ by WaPo’s Gillian Brockell.”

Here’s how the Post piece begins:

Clearly, what Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was going for was a comparison to Tom Cruise.

Hence the “Top Gov” label at the beginning of his latest political ad, which resembles that of Cruise’s “Top Gun” movies, and the slo-mo shots of the Republican governor zipping up a flight suit over an energetic guitar music track. DeSantis “briefs” an out-of-view team — presumably Florida voters — about the “rules of engagement” for “dogfighting” with the “corporate media.” At one point, he sits in the cockpit of what appears to be a fighter jet, flight helmet on, and says, “Alright, ladies and gentlemen.”

Granted, DeSantis was only 10 years old when the Duke-in-a-Tank ad ran, but no one around him could’ve stopped this? What the hell, Doc.

– Helmet Head

Dear Helmet Head,

Exactly how dopey does Ron DeSantis look in his TV spot? Exactly this dopey, courtesy of the Post.

Also instructive is a compare ‘n’ contrast viewing of the two misbegotten ads.

Let’s start with Mike Dukakis’s tanking his 1988 presidential campaign, as he tried to butch up his image on national defense. Here’s the spot that George H.W. Bush ad ran in response.  (Politico’s Josh King wrote a great piece on “the inside story of the worst campaign photo op ever.”)

Cut to Ron DeSantis trying to butch up his image with some Tom Cruise cosplaying and corporate-media bashing.

Cue the Twitterverse nailing DeSantis as a twit.

For more Twitter mockery, check out David Moye’s HuffPost piece.

Meanwhile, Rule #1 of political campaigning remains: Never put anything – especially anything feathered – on your head.

Hats off to JFK for that.

So How Did the Democrats Do With Those ‘Sabotage Ads’ Touting GOP Crazies?

by doctorads

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

Dear Dr. Ads,

A couple of weeks ago you wrote about the trend by Democrats to meddle in GOP primaries by boosting the most radical candidates, presumably because they’d be easier to beat in a general election.

You also wrote this: “The Doc will make some house calls at the end of the month to determine the health of those Democratic investments. And prescribe condolences accordingly.”

So, what’s up, Doc?

– MAGAfier

Dear Mf,

Much the same as the Democratic saboteurs achieved mixed results in earlier primaries, their Tuesday tally was decidedly uneven, as the Washington Post’s Amber Phillips noted in a lively roundup.

Start with the Illinois GOP gubernatorial bakeoff.

Some believed that, with 2022 looking tough for Democrats, Republicans could take the governor’s mansion in deep blue Illinois.

That got a lot more difficult after Tuesday’s Republican primary. Voters nominated conservative firebrand state Sen. Darren Bailey over a more traditional Republican candidate to take on Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) in November. Democrats are thrilled about this. Bailey wants to ban abortion in the state (except in cases where the woman’s life is in danger) and has described Chicago as “a crime-ridden, corrupt, dysfunctional hellhole.” He once tried to eject the city from the state, and he has former president Donald Trump’s endorsement.

Bailey also had $30 million worth of Pritzker and Democratic Governors Association advertising to pump him up.

Then again, the opponent Pritzker really did not want to face – Black, moderate, Aurora mayor Richard Irvin – ran a campaign grubstaked to the tune of $50 million by hedge-fund manager Kenneth Griffin.

So hold the violins, yeah?

Here’s the tally, via Ballotpedia.

Really? Fifty million bucks bought a third-place finish for Irvin?

All those dollars and no sense.

Then there’s the GOP gubernatorial race in Colorado, into which the Democratic Governors Association also stuck its nose, running an ad campaign with $1.5 million that the DGA laundered through a couple of PACs.

That was more money down the drain, as Amber Phillips noted in her WaPo piece: “Heidi Ganahl — as a University of Colorado regent, the state’s lone Republican elected statewide — defeated Greg Lopez.”

Which is to say, the moderate beat the MAGAt once again.

Ballotpedia has the numbers.

And chalk up one more for the moderates, this time in Colorado’s GOP U.S. Senate primary, which Axios’s Sophia Cai previewed this way.

In Colorado, a new Democratic super PAC cut a TV ad boosting far-right, election-denying state Rep. Ron Hanks in the June 28 GOP primary to decide who will take on Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.).

The group has reserved at least $1.49 million in TV ad slots across Colorado over the next few weeks.

Hanks’ moderate Republican rival Joe O’Dea accused Democrats of “hijacking the Republican nomination for an unserious candidate who has zero chance of winning.”

Here’s how WaPo’s Amber Phillips post-mortemed it: “Republicans nominated a more moderate Republican, businessman Joe O’Dea, to challenge Sen. Michael F. Bennet (D) in November. (Democrats had spent millions trying to get a far-right state representative to win the nomination.)”

Here’s the Ballotpedia ballot results.

So, for those of you keeping score at home, the moderates beat the MAGAts (and the Dimocrats) two-to-one this past Tuesday.

Your big foam hand goes here.

What’s With the ‘I’m Not a Racist’ Ads in Ohio’s Republican Senate Primary?

by doctorads

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

Dear Dr. Ads,

There I was the other day, minding my own business and reading Politico’s Playbook PM, when I came across this item.

AD WARS — In the Ohio GOP Senate primary, one of the leading issues is fighting against being called “racist.” That’s the takeaway from two new ads released by JOSH MANDEL and J.D. VANCE, who both take umbrage at the criticism, as NBC’s Henry Gomez notes. Mandel shot his ad from the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., invoking Rev. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR., while Vance linked his own views on the border to his family’s experience with addiction.

Here’s the first tweet Gomez posted, about Vance’s ad.

And here’s the follow-up about Mandel’s ad.

What’s next, Doc – candidates saying “I’m not a Martian” in their ads?

– Buckeye Bill

Dear Buckeye,

Well for one thing, no one has yet accused Mandel and Vance of being a Martian, although both of them do seem like they’re from another planet. But that’s beside the point. The point actually is that each of them has been called a racist, which is what triggered these ads.

Let’s start with Mandel’s spot, which is titled Equality and begins with an Ohio woman saying “critical race theory is crap.”

The first kerfuffle generated by the ad came from the King family, which basically told Mandel to keep Martin’s name out of his mouth. The second kerfuffle was occasioned by this image from the spot.

The immediate reaction went something like this: Did Josh Mandel edit his face onto a Black Marine in his new U.S. Senate ad? As Haley BeMiller reported in the Cincinnati Enquirer, the answer is no.

The ad shows several photos of Mandel during his time in Iraq, including one of him and a group of Black Marines. In that image, Mandel’s hands appear darker than the rest of his skin, prompting allegations on social media that the campaign edited his face onto a different body.

Mandel’s campaign disputed the claims and provided a copy of the original photo to USA TODAY Network Ohio, which shows his hand and skin tone matching . . .

A photo editor for USA TODAY Network Ohio examined a copy of the original photo and said it did not readily appear to be digitally altered.

So that’s one good thing you can say about Josh Mandel. Maybe the only good thing, but let’s not get technical about it.

Then there’s JD Vance, celebrated author of the bestselling Hillbilly Elegy (interesting book, awful movie), who morphed from a Trump critic in 2016 to a full-fledged MAGAt for the purposes of this campaign.

Here’s Vance’s current TV spot.

And here’s Vance’s current problem, as detailed by Fidel Martinez in the Los Angeles Times.

“Five years ago, Vance was eloquently decoding Donald Trump supporters for liberal elites, while lamenting the rise of Trump himself,” wrote Simon van Zuylen-Wood in a January profile published in the Washington Post Magazine.

Now Vance is running for Senate in Ohio, a state the former president comfortably won in 2016 and 2020, and has desperately tried to walk back his past criticism of Trump.

“Look, I mean, all of us say stupid things and I happened to say stupid things very publicly,” he said at a debate in March.

Vance hasn’t just apologized. He has gone full Trump.

Full Trump, of course, entails never telling the truth when a lie better suits your purposes. “This issue is personal,” Vance says in the spot. “I nearly lost my mother to the poison coming across our border.”

But, as Martinez notes, “it’s worth pointing out that Vance famously recounts in his memoir that his mom would steal her patients’ painkillers while working as a nurse. But sure, let’s blame it on the Mexicans.”

Right. All the kids are doing it.

The Doc’s diagnosis: This campaign will turn out to be JD Vance’s Hillbilly Eulogy.

How Can You Tell If Sarah Huckabee Sanders Is Lying in Her Campaign Ads?

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 scrolling through Punchbowl News AM when I came across this item in the newsletter’s Tally section, which tracks the latest 2022 campaign ads.

Arkansas GOP gubernatorial candidate Sarah Huckabee Sanders compares the White House press corps to her unruly children and takes a shot at CNN in her latest ad.

“As White House press secretary, I had to say no. A lot,” Sanders says in the ad. “Being a mom to young kids was the perfect training.”

Sanders also pledges to oppose President Joe Biden’s “radical” agenda and advocates for “good schools, lower taxes and higher-paying jobs.” Huckabee Sanders will very likely be the next governor of Arkansas, so we’re keeping a close eye on how she positions herself.

To be honest, Doc, I didn’t know much of anything about Huckabee Sanders, but when I Googled her, this 2019 Vanity Fair piece by Bess Levin – headline: “As Sarah Sanders Signs Off, A Look Back At Her Biggest Lies” – popped up. Here’s a representative sample.

So I gotta ask, Doc – how do we know if Huckabee Sanders is lying in her campaign ads?

– Huckaboo

Dear Huckaboo,

It’s tempting, of course, to answer your question, “because her lips are moving.” At least that was the case when Huckabee Sanders was the mouthpiece for the Capo di Tutti Liars, Donald J. Trump, as you astutely noted.

But let’s take a step back and look at her latest TV spot.

Here’s the funny thing: Huckabee Sanders compares the White House press corps to a bunch of rambunctious kids, but in reality it’s she who fits the age-old juvenile stereotype: Kids who lie about what they’ve done to avoid the consequences.

She even lies about lying, as Scott Martelle noted in this 2019 Los Angeles Times op-ed.

Soup to nuts graf:

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who has never found a fact she couldn’t twist, denied Friday morning that there’s a culture of lying at the White House.

The Doc’s diagnosis: Caveat videntium when it comes to any Sarah Hucksterbee Sanders ad in her quest for the Arkansas corner office.

Why Is a U.S. Senate Candidate Burning the Confederate Flag and a Blunt in His Ads?

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 the Washington Post when I came across this piece by Julian Mark.

A U.S. Senate candidate smoked marijuana in his last campaign ad. This time, he burned a Confederate flag.

Last month, Gary Chambers drew attention for sparking up a marijuana blunt in a political campaign ad. Now the Democrat from Louisiana is getting attention for sparking up something else: a Confederate flag.

The new ad shows Chambers, who’s running for U.S. Senate, dousing the flag in gasoline in slow motion and setting it ablaze as he denounces what he describes as systemic inequality among Black Americans and argues that “remnants of the Confederacy remain.”

“The attacks against Black people — our right to vote and participate in this democracy — are methodical,” Chamber says in the one-minute video released Wednesday, adding: “Our system isn’t broken; it’s designed to do exactly what it’s doing, which is producing measurable inequity.”

What the heck, Doc – isn’t the U.S. Senate supposed to be the world’s greatest deliberative body, not its most flammable?

– Burn Noticing

Dear Burn,

Let’s look at those two ads, shall we?

Here’s the one Chambers released last month, which runs for 37 seconds and notes that every 37 seconds someone is arrested for possession of marijuana.

 

 

According to the Post, that video has racked up 6.7 million views on Twitter.

Two days ago Chambers released Scars and Bars, which quickly got one million views on Twitter and over 300,000 looks on YouTube.

 

 

That’s some crazy-pants stuff for a U.S. Senate race, but maybe that’s what it takes for a badass Black candidate to get any traction in Louisiana, a state so backward its unofficial slogan is “Thank God for Mississippi.”

(To be sure graf goes here)

To be sure, the Doc has roughly the same chance of beating incumbent Sen. John N. Kennedy (R-Who Else Ken I Insult) as Gary Chambers does.

But it will be a helluva lot more fun watching Chambers try to take that peckerhead down than anything the Doc might concoct.

Stay tuned for further details.