With 10 days until the presidential candidates meet in their first debate, President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign on Monday launched a new $50 million ad campaign that includes a spot focusing on former President Donald Trump’s 34-crime conviction last month.
Entitled “Character matters” the ad described Trump as “a convicted criminal who only thinks about himself,” comparing him to Biden, “a president who is fighting for his family.”
Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler said in a statement that Trump “will do absolutely anything for his personal gain and his own power,” adding that “his entire campaign is an exercise in vengeance and vengeance.”
Following Trump’s conviction in New York on 34 felonies, Trump is scheduled to be sentenced on July 11, just days before the start of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. The new Biden campaign ad, which will air on free-to-air television in battleground states and on national cable television, is the first time the Biden campaign has taken direct aim at convicting Trump.
A pro-Trump super PAC ran an advertising campaign in Pennsylvania in April, critical of the Biden administration’s immigration policy. The ad came out the same week Biden visited Pennsylvania, campaigning in Scranton, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia ahead of the state’s April 23 primary.
A Trump campaign spokesman on Monday echoed several of Trump’s complaints about the trial and said Biden and Democrats have “weaponized the justice system” against him.
“This new ad proves once again that the sham trial was always intended to interfere with the election, but the American people saw through it,” Karoline Leavitt, national press secretary for the Trump campaign, said in a statement Monday. “Despite the failed Biden campaign, which spent nearly $70 million on media buys, President Trump continues to crush Joe Biden in the polls, leading in every key battleground state and gaining double-digit leads among independents.”
This will be Trump’s fourth visit to Pennsylvania in 2024 and second to Philadelphia this year. In February, he spoke at the National Rifle Association rally in Harrisburg and announced a new line of Trump-branded sneakers in Philadelphia at SneakerCon that same month. In April, Trump held a rally in the Lehigh Valley during his last visit to Pennsylvania.
Biden has made eight appearances in Pennsylvania this year, and in slow May he visited Philadelphia with Vice President Kamala to announce the launch of the Black Voters for Biden-Harris program at Girard College. Most of Biden’s visits to Pennsylvania were in the southeastern part of the state, a largely Democratic region.
In the 2020 election, Biden defeated Trump in Pennsylvania by just over 80,000 votes.
This article was updated at 9 a.m., June 17, 2024, with comment from the Trump campaign.
