A new TV ad by an anti-Trump political action committee likens former President Donald Trump to dictators throughout history.
The 60-second ad, put out by the Republican Accountability PAC, titled “Dictator Donald,” compares Mr. Trump to Italy’s Benito Mussolini, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Chile’s Augusto Pinochet and Hungary’s Viktor Orban.
“Trump said he would terminate the Constitution so he could be president again,” the ad’s narrator says. “Do you know who else did that? Mussolini, Chavez, Pinochet. All of them shelved their constitutions to centralize power.”
“Trump is planning to purge tens of thousands of civil servants and replace them with loyalists,” the ad says. “Authoritarian Viktor Orban used the same tactic to dismantle Hungary’s democracy.”
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment about the ad campaign.
The ad is part of the political action committee’s new six-figure ad campaign. It will run nationally on CNN and MSNBC in the battleground states Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin on the Hallmark Channel and during TBS’ “A Christmas Story” marathon starting Friday.
“Donald Trump’s chances of winning are very real. The alarm is going off. Everyone needs to wake up. We have a choice between protecting our democracy or letting Trump destroy it,” the ad says. “It’s time to get off the sidelines. We can’t let Donald Trump get close to the Oval Office again.”
Gunner Ramer, the PAC’s political director, said that “not enough people have internalized that Trump is cruising to a third nomination.”
“He’s become even more conspiratorial, more dictatorial, more authoritarian — and he has a real chance of being the next president of the United States,” he said. “It’s time to start confronting the problem head-on.”
• Mallory Wilson can be reached at mwilson@washingtontimes.com.
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