The effectiveness, in fact the very purpose, of The Lincoln Project’s ads has been debated and questioned. For example:
A few anti-Trump Republicans have successfully invaded Trump’s mental space with popular ads. Now they're trying to figure out what to do with the attention.
and
Founded by anti-Trump Republicans, the new PAC is getting lots of attention. But is it achieving anything?
Perhaps all the ads do is amuse folks like you and I. They may not sway a single Trump voter or someone who is starting to question whether or not to vote for him a second time.
As ads they tend to be very well crafted and powerful but my sense is that they are preaching to the choir. I don’t think that the ad above stands a chance of opening the minds of more than a few Trump supporters to how Trump is Putin’s puppet, or if Trump sees it, to even getting under his skin.
The reason for this is that the speaker playing Putin is speaking Russian and my sense is that Republicans in general do not watch foreign movies and mentally tune out foreign speakers on TV even when there are subtitles. In fact Business Insider reported in 2016 that
- A new poll from Pew Research Center found many Republicans are bothered by hearing foreign languages in public and aren't particularly enthused by the fact America's population is extremely diverse.
- The poll found that 20% of Republican voters said it bothers them "a lot" to hear a foreign language in public and 27% said it bothers them "some."
- The poll showed Democrats are far more likely to be OK with hearing a foreign language in public, and more likely to say it's "very good" the US population is made up of many different races and ethnicities.
I couldn’t find statistics on how many Republicans vs. Democrats watched foreign movies but it stands to reason that if it bothers half of them to hear a foreign language in public they wouldn’t watch a foreign language movie even if it had subtitles. Unless a person is used to watching a movie with subtitles it takes some getting used to.
Besides, the typical MAGA cultist is a super-nationalist and I doubt is a foreign film aficionado. These ads air on Fox News and I don’t think their typical viewer will make any sense of it. I think it would have been far better if they simply had an actor speaking and laughing villainously with a Russian accent like Boris Badenov:
Afterthought:
I think those in Trump’s inner circle wish they could stop Trump from seeing these ads since they are aired on his favorite Fox shows because they probably trigger him.
Hal’s Blog Stories that piqued my interest today.