WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s campaign is launching a new $14 million ad blitz in the half-dozen likely swing states, kicking off Wednesday with a spot going after his predecessor for wanting to “terminate” the Affordable Care Act.
“Donald Trump is openly running on a platform of terminating the ACA, ripping away a lifeline for tens of millions of Americans,” campaign communications director Michael Tyler told reporters Tuesday. “We’ll be highlighting the contrast on health care loud and clear in our paid spending this month.”
That spending is to include at least $1 million to reach Black, Latino and Asian American voters, including ads on radio stations that cater to those communities.
“We have to reach out to every gettable voter,” said Dan Kanninen, the campaign’s battleground states director.
He added that Trump’s criminal trial on charges in New York, his choice to spend many days not in court playing golf near his South Florida country club, and his inability or unwillingness to woo backers of former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in the Republican presidential primaries will make it harder for the presumptive GOP nominee to consolidate the support he needs in November.
“The split screen between our two campaigns is only going to sharpen,” Kanninen said. “While Trump is stuck in New York or hiding at Mar-a-Lago, we are expanding and deepening our reach in every critical battleground community.”
The Trump campaign did not respond to a HuffPost query. But Trump himself, as he has frequently, again complained at the end of court proceedings Tuesday that his trial was preventing him from campaigning.
“I’m stuck. I’m here instead of being in Georgia, instead of being in New Hampshire, instead of being in Wisconsin and all the different states that we wanted to be in. We’re not able to be there because we’re stuck in this trial, which everyone knows is a hoax,” he said in a corridor outside the courtroom where he has spent most of the past three weeks.
Trump is accused of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to hide a $130,000 payment he made to a porn star to buy her silence ahead of the 2016 election, when her story could have cratered his presidential campaign. The actor, known as Stormy Daniels, testified under oath Tuesday that she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006.
Trump also faces three other indictments, two of which stem from his Jan. 6, 2021, coup attempt and his actions leading up to that day. Both of those cases could go to trial later this year.
The fourth prosecution, based on his refusal to turn over secret documents that he took with him to Mar-a-Lago upon leaving the White House, on Tuesday was postponed by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who has since she was assigned the case appeared generally sympathetic to Trump’s claim that he is being unfairly “persecuted.”
Trump also lost civil judgments this year that require him to pay $454 million to the state of New York for fraudulent business practices and $88 million to writer E. Jean Carroll, whom he sexually abused by digitally penetrating her against her will, according to a federal jury. The judge in that case wrote that the act constituted rape in the common parlance.
At the end of March, the Biden campaign, the Democratic Party and their joint fundraising committee had $171.9 million in the bank, compared with $93.1 million for Trump and the Republicans ― based largely on Biden’s lack of a competitive primary and his ability to bring in large-dollar checks for his party. Candidates are limited to $6,600 contributions, and cannot solicit six-figure checks for their parties until they have clinched their nominations. For Trump, that did not take place until March.
Despite all this, Trump is essentially tied with Biden in national polls and slightly ahead of him in the seven likely swing states.
Biden campaign officials, nevertheless, said that they are not alarmed.
“We feel very confident about where we are now. We’re not going to pay attention to polls or sort of revert our strategy based on what polls are doing,” said Quentin Fulks, the principal deputy campaign manager. “We believe that this race is going to be won on the ground, in the states.”
