The most effective attack ad of the midterms so far features Donald Trump. In it, the president promises to “expel the warmongers from Washington.” The people who bought the airtime and are running the ad seem to have failed to notice what they’re running, eight months into a disastrous Iran war of his own choosing.
The ad, which began airing on Fox News in the local DC market last Thursday, moved to national spots this weekend across Sunday shows and NFL games. The federal government is paying for it, which has become an understandable scandal, earning both A-block coverage and even Republican criticism.
There is no other way to describe the spot than a Trump campaign ad. Literally.
Put it next to a campaign ad Trump ran as a presidential candidate in 2024, and you’ll see the exact same video, rally audio, and black-and-white footage of Trump walking down a hallway staring menacingly at the camera. The ad is narrated in his voice, promising “the final battle.” Like most of Trump’s campaign messaging, It’s over-the-top, very much by design.
The only new thing is the disclaimer at the end, which now reads “Paid for by the U.S. Government.”
Almost all of the coverage has focused on who underwrote the media spend, which is understandable, since the answer is you, the American taxpayer. AP reports the first spot alone is up to $443,000, from $13,000 on Thursday, and there are three of them now. Progressive watchdog Public Citizen has already filed a complaint with the GAO and the Office of Special Counsel. Republican Senator John Kennedy went on Face the Nation and said no public official “including President Trump or Kristi Noem or John Kennedy” should “spend public money on private ads for themselves.”
But I’m more interested in what the ad says, because I don’t think anyone who approved it listened to what’s actually in it, in particular, Trump’s vow to demolish the deep state and expel the warmongers. Anyone who’s watched a Trump rally in the last three years will recognize the passage. It’s the big close, and he has been doing it since CPAC in March of 2023. He often tells his crowd who the warmongers were, the people who “start a war every week,” and then, in case there was any confusion, “We don’t want wars.”
Trump has been bombing Iran since February.
Over the weekend, The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump has told aides he expects to start the war up again after the midterms. Mike Waltz, his UN ambassador, got asked about that on both Face the Nation and CNN’s State of the Union. He blew off the questions as “anonymous reporting” and “some reporting by a newspaper.” That’s how you respond when you'd rather not discuss it. He also didn’t deny it on either program.
Trump is promising to “expel the warmongers” in a national ad running during NFL games and Sunday shows, paid for by American taxpayers. Trump is also going to resume airstrikes against Iran just after the midterms. Those two things seem to be in conflict. This doesn’t seem particularly well thought through. In fact, it seems nobody near the White House re-tested this ad given the current climate.
In 2023, when Trump first rolled it out, the “expel the warmongers” messaging worked. Three years later, and eight months into a war most Republicans are over, it’s clearly backfiring. Unless he’s grown tired of the job and is signaling that he’s the warmonger he wants expelled? That’s what the current polling suggests is the likely result, at least in terms of his party’s chances of staying in power.
Cry for help or lazy appeal to the boss's ego that wasn’t thought through? I’m betting it’s the latter. It's hilariously incompetent either way.