Trump Appears to Have Forgotten Who He’s Running Against in New Ad
Donald Trump released a new ad attacking Joe Biden, not Kamala Harris.
![Donald Trump gestures as he speaks at a campaign rally](http://images.newrepublic.com/911052e7ebc446e6bb5d60828a4d105bd8df288a.jpeg?auto=format&fit=crop&crop=faces&q=65&w=768&h=undefined&ar=3%3A2&ixlib=react-9.0.2&w=768)
Donald Trump returned to X (formerly Twitter) ahead of a one-on-one interview with Elon Musk Monday. But rather than elevate that, or attack his current opponent’s policies, one of Trump’s first ads directed at his 88.1 million followers on the platform appeared to narrowly focus on President Joe Biden.
The roughly two-minute video—captioned “TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING!”—attempted to frame Trump as a candidate primed for election since 1987, when he was still a major New York City developer.
“In the ads, he says there’s nothing wrong with American foreign policy that a little backbone won’t cure,” a dated broadcaster can be heard saying at the ad’s opening.
As the music escalates, Trump can be heard claiming that he and his followers will “determine the course of America, and the world, for many, many years to come.” The convicted fraudster—who also announced his intention to sue the Justice Department to the tune of $100 million for the FBI raid on his Florida estate—argues in the video that he’s the antidote for corruption at the highest levels of government.
But by the end of the ad, it’s clear that Trump has not yet found a proper angle of attack against his new Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. Instead, the ad directly calls out Biden, reiterating outdated polls that found Trump to be leading the former nominee.
“TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING!” https://t.co/MlIKklPSJT pic.twitter.com/0mMyATtbkJ
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 12, 2024
Unfortunately for him, that’s no longer the current state of the race. Since Harris and Tim Walz joined the opposite ticket, Trump has seen a dramatic slip in support, including from white men—the bulk of his base—despite his attempts to pander to them this election cycle.
Trump has also upset white supremacists, with one popular pro-Hitler livestreamer publicly revoking his support for Trump on Friday, announcing on social media that he and his allies were declaring a “groyper war” against the Trump campaign over the belief that the candidate was headed toward a “catastrophic loss.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s number two pick—Ohio Senator J.D. Vance—has also proven remarkably unpopular with voters, with 62 percent of surveyed voters noting they were “bothered” by Vance’s abortion stance and his description of rape and incest-caused pregnancies as “inconvenient.”