Donald Trump’s approval ratings are stuck in the toilet, and his usual methods of promoting alternative facts are not helping: not Twitter, not Fox News, not Breitbart. Some people might conclude that the answer was to do something differently, but those people are not dealing with Donald Trump. So a group of wealthy supporters has come up with a different answer: advertising.
Making America Great, a nonprofit run by Rebekah Mercer, one of Trump’s most influential donors, will begin airing $1 million in television ads on Wednesday, coupled with a $300,000 digital advertising campaign. The TV ads will run in the District of Columbia, along with ten states Trump carried in the presidential election where a Democratic senator is up for re-election in 2018: West Virginia, Wisconsin, Missouri, Michigan, North Dakota, Florida, Ohio, Indiana, Montana and Pennsylvania. The digital campaign also will focus on voters in those states.
“Our group will be a conduit to highlight President Trump’s achievement to the rest of the country,” says Emily Cornell, who is moving from the Mercer-funded data firm Cambridge Analytica to run Making America Great’s day-to-day operations. “We are here to promote successes and hold accountable broken promises -- not just to those who voted for Trump, but to all Americans.”
“President Trump’s achievement.” Do tell.
Making America Great’s first television ad emphasizes Trump’s early accomplishments: the 298,000 jobs created during his first month in office, his decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and his approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline. The ad does not mention the health-care bill.
Oh, my, what a record of achievement and accomplishment! A similar number of jobs were created in February 2017 as were created in February 2016 and Trump made it official that he would do some things for which we have yet to see outcomes. Be still my heart.
So this is more Trumpian BS, being sold to television viewers by the daughter of a billionaire hedge fund manager and her rich Republican friends. The good news is that $1 million won’t take you very far spread across 10 states and the District of Columbia, and by 2018 voters will have had plenty of chances to see Trump’s real accomplishments in action. Still, it’s a reminder that Republican billionaires will not stop campaigning even as their politicians fail at governing. Democrats need to be working not just against the terrible policies of Donald Trump and Paul Ryan but to win the messaging war in their states ahead of 2018.