Trump ad falsely suggests Biden supports defunding police

The Trump campaign has a problem. Former vice president Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has firmly rejected calls from left-wing activists to “defund police.” But clearly the Trump campaign wants to tag him with the somewhat confusing slogan. So it produced an ad that slickly tries to get around this uncomfortable fact.

The Trump campaign must think the effort is a winner. Ben Taber, an account manager at Advertising Analytics, says that as of July 13, the Trump campaign had spent $6.7 million placing the ad on network television and on local stations in Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, Arizona, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nevada, Iowa, New Mexico and Michigan.

But, factually, the ad is a loser.

The Facts

The scenes of mayhem in the ad come from some of the recent looting that took place after George Floyd’s death in police custody in Minneapolis. Okay, so these images are technically Donald Trump’s America, not Joe Biden’s. But we will leave that aside. Continue reading.