President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign is taking off the gloves and going after his rival, presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, with a new $50 million ad campaign focusing on the former president’s historic criminal conviction in New York.
The 30-second spot, titled Character Matters, features images of Trump in the Manhattan courtroom where he was found guilty last month of falsifying business records to hide payments to an adult film star.
“He’s been convicted of 34 felonies, found liable for sexual assault, and he committed financial fraud,” the narrator says in the ad. “This election is between a convicted criminal who’s only out for himself and a president who’s fighting for your family.”
Biden’s campaign said the ad is targeting voters in all battleground states in the month of June, contrasting Trump’s legal troubles with Biden’s legislative accomplishments, including working to lower health care costs and counteract the effects of inflation.
“Character matters, and the President of the United States should be someone who understands that the highest office in the land is about you and your family ― not a vehicle to enrich yourself,” Biden campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler said in a statement. “That is the ethos Joe Biden puts into the job every day: to fight for safer communities, for the middle class, and to ensure that corporations are paying their fair share. It’s a stark contrast, and it’s one that matters deeply to the American people.”
Biden’s campaign said the new ad rollout will also include “historic, seven-figure investments into reaching Black, Latino, and [Asian American and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander] voters” ― a core part of the Democratic voting bloc ― and that these are the campaign’s largest investments to date in ads directed at those communities. The messaging will focus on protecting the Affordable Care Act, lower consumer costs, and promises that the administration has kept for Black communities.
Some recent polls of the 2024 race have shown Trump making inroads with minority communities as Biden’s approval rating has been stuck below 40%, worrying some Democrats. Both the Biden and Trump campaigns have stepped up their outreach to Black voters in recent weeks, underscoring the political power the demographic will hold in November.
Trump recently held a rally in the South Bronx in New York, home to a large number of Black and Hispanic voters. He also courted Black voters at a church in Detroit over the weekend, where he spoke out against illegal immigration. However, images and videos of the event showed few Black people in attendance.