Tag: Trump re-election campaign

Trump facing ‘internal backlash’ from his own campaign over indoor Vegas rally: report

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President Donald Trump’s defiant decision to hold an indoor rally in Las Vegas during the COVID-19 pandemic didn’t just anger the president’s usual critics, but also some of his own campaign staff.

The New York Times reports that Trump’s indoor rally over the weekend sparked “a wave of internal backlash, including from a top Trump adviser who said the president was playing a game of Russian roulette in holding the indoor rally.”

The Trump adviser, who wished to remain anonymous, told the Times that Trump could hurt himself politically if there’s a surge in COVID-19 cases in Las Vegas over the next several weeks. Continue reading.

Trump campaign bets big on digital ads to counter Biden

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President Trump’s campaign is investing heavily in digital ads on Facebook and Google as it seeks to counter Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s massive advantage in television advertising.

The Trump campaign has plowed more than $170 million into Facebook and Google since 2019, compared with $90 million by the Biden campaign, according to data from Bully Pulpit Interactive.

Biden’s campaign has ramped up its spending on Facebook and Google in recent weeks, cutting into Trump’s spending advantage and matching the president’s digital spending in battleground states. The Biden campaign trounced the Trump campaign in digital fundraising in August. Continue reading.

Trump revives 2016 playbook for Biden battle

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President Trump is embracing a similar playbook to the one that guided him to a surprise victory in 2016, hoping the same strategy will win him reelection in November.

In both 2016 and the closing months of the 2020 campaign, his messaging has focused heavily on his base, he has made near-daily media appearances to drive the news cycle, he has used law and order and the fear of violence in cities to motivate voters, and he has accused his opponents of corruption.

The strategy proved successful four years ago, and he appears poised to rely on a comparable formula with just 70 days until Election Day. That approach was on full display Monday in a roughly hourlong speech in which Trump blasted the media, torched “weak” Democratic leaders for their handling of protesters and reiterated his belief that he can lose in November only if there’s a “rigged election,” even as allies acknowledge mail-in ballots are safe. Continue reading.

Sinking in the Polls, Trump Tweets About Lobsters

Yesterday began with a New York Times poll that was pretty awful for President Donald Trump, and I was contemplating writing a complicated item about whether we should pay attention to such surveys at this point in the election cycle. But then the lobsters.

The president on Wednesday night announced some new initiatives to help the Maine lobster industry, and accompanied the plan with a false tweet claiming that “Pres. Obama destroyed the lobster and fishing industry in Maine. Now it’s back, bigger and better than anyone ever thought possible.”

In fact, people who know the industry noted that it was doing just fine until Trump’s trade war. But CNN’s Jake Tapper made a different point. He noted that presidential actions and communications are often carefully targeted — in this case, to Maine’s second congressional district, which has its own electoral vote. He concluded that “whatever you think of President Trump, and despite current crappy polls for him, he has the power of incumbency & many smart GOP operatives working hard to get him re-elected using all the levers of the most powerful government in the world.” Continue reading.

Facebook takes down Trump ads featuring symbol used by Nazis to mark political prisoners

The Hill logoFacebook on Thursday took down Trump campaign ads against antifa that prominently featured a symbol used by Nazis to designate political prisoners, a spokesperson for the company confirmed to The Hill.

“We removed these posts and ads for violating our policy against organized hate,” Facebook said in a statement. “Our policy prohibits using a banned hate group’s symbol to identify political prisoners without the context that condemns or discusses the symbol.”

The ads featured an inverted red triangle, which was used by Nazis to identify political opponents including communists, social democrats and liberals at concentration camps. Continue reading.

Trump Campaign Manager Says 800,000 Registered for Tickets to Tulsa Rally—But the Venue Only Seats 19,200

TOPLINE — The Trump campaign has put out conflicting figures on how many tickets have been registered for their June 20 rally in Tulsa, with campaign manager Brad Parscale now claiming 800,000 people registered for tickets despite the venue seating just over 19,000.

KEY FACTS

  • “Trump #MAGA Rally in Tulsa is hottest ticket ever!” Parscale tweeted on Friday. “Over 200K tickets already & it’s not even political season.”
  • He added that they are “looking at a 2nd event in town to get more people to be with Donald Trump,” likely because the venue, the BOK Center, only seats 19,200 people.

Continue reading.

Trump attorney spirals out in unhinged CNN rant claiming Trump is winning except in ‘junk science’ polls

AlterNet logoJenna Ellis, an attorney for President Donald Trump’s campaign, on Sunday defended a lawsuit threat against CNN which seeks to suppress a poll showing the president losing to presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

“No pollster in the world would stand behind this as a legitimate poll, according to industry standards,” Ellis told CNN’s Brian Stelter. “So why would CNN? Why?”

“What industry standards?” Stelter asked. “This poll is in line with other network polls. Pretty much every poll shows Trump losing to Biden.” Continue reading.

READ: CNN’s response to Trump campaign’s demand for an apology over poll that shows Biden leading

David Vigilante, CNN’s executive vice president and general counsel, issued a pointed response Wednesday to the demand by President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign that the network retract and apologize for a recent poll that showed him behind presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

The demand, which contained numerous incorrect and misleading claims, was immediately rejected by the network, which stands by its poll.

“To my knowledge, this is the first time in its 40-year history that CNN had been threatened with legal action because an American politician or campaign did not like CNN’s polling results,” Vigilante wrote in his response. “To the extent we have received legal threats from political leaders in the past, they have typically come from countries like Venezuela or other regimes where there is little or no respect for a free and independent media.” Continue reading.

Trump Campaign Targets TV Ads To Make Trump Feel Better

Donald Trump’s reelection campaign is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on targeted campaign ads not to swing voter sentiment, but to mollify Trump, who is angry about his poor poll numbers, the Daily Beast reported on Monday.

According to the report, the campaign spent $400,000 to run ads on cable news channels Trump watches. The ads are running in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia — all of which Trump lost in 2016 and has little shot of winning in 2020.

Hillary Clinton won Maryland in 2016 with 60 percent of the vote, and Virginia with 50 percentof the vote. The last time a Republican won Virginia at the presidential level was in 2004, while a Republican presidential candidate hasn’t won Maryland since 1988. Continue reading.

Twitter disables Trump campaign’s George Floyd video tribute

The social media company last month slapped fact-check warnings on two tweets from the president’s own account.

Twitter has blocked a Trump campaign video tribute to George Floyd over a copyright claim, in a move that adds to tensions between the social media platform and the president, one of its most widely followed users.

The company put a label on a video posted by the @TeamTrump account that said, “This media has been disabled in response to a claim by the copyright owner.” The video was still up on President Donald Trump’s YouTube channel and includes pictures of Floyd, whose death sparked widespread protests, at the start.

“Per our copyright policy, we respond to valid copyright complaints sent to us by a copyright owner or their authorized representatives,” Twitter said in a statement. It did not say who made the complaint. Continue reading.