Get ready to see a lot more political ads.
Make America Great Again Inc. — a political action committee — plans to spend $100 million on advertising supporting former President Donald Trump between now and Labor Day, a period spanning the Aug. 19-22 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
The blitz will focus on television and digital ads in four states — Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and North Carolina — while expanding on existing operations in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona.
MAGA Inc. strategists say their new ads will characterize Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, as a “soft-on-crime radical who is too dangerous for the White House.”
“Americans might vote for a liberal, but they won’t vote for a lunatic,” MAGA Inc. Executive Director David Lee and senior adviser Chris Grant wrote in a memo obtained by The Washington Times.
The PAC spending comes on top of a $37 million ad buy from the Trump campaign last weekend, according to AdImpact data. The biggest share of the campaign’s spending will focus on Georgia, a state that Democrats swiped in 2020.
Mr. Trump, the Republican nominee, is trying to pump the brakes on Ms. Harris’ meteoric rise since taking over the Democratic ticket in place of President Biden last month.
She has drawn large crowds in swing states and is getting media attention over her selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate.
Polls show Ms. Harris has gained on Mr. Trump in key states and leads by low single-digits in some places.
The Trump campaign is trying to reel in voters by defining Ms. Harris as a liberal who flip-flops on key issues, failed to secure the southern U.S. border and had a rocky tenure in her home state.
“She’s a San Francisco liberal who destroyed San Francisco, and then as attorney general, she destroyed California,” Mr. Trump said late Monday in a two-hour interview with X CEO Elon Musk.
Alongside the ads, Mr. Trump is increasing his “earned media” — publicity that a candidate gets from third parties without paying them — through interviews, an upcoming rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and a notable return to posting on X alongside his own social media platform, Truth Social.
Mr. Trump is pivoting back to policy issues after he spent days focused on crowd sizes and attacked podcaster Joe Rogan.
Hoping to preserve its momentum, the Harris campaign this week said it is placing more than 80 billboards in seven swing states. It is the first major ad buy since Ms. Harris selected Mr. Walz as her running mate.
The billboards say Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz are “fighting for you” while Mr. Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, are “out for themselves.”
The billboards will appear in English and Spanish and show up in prominent places, including the Las Vegas Strip and interstate highways in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
“Voters across the battlegrounds are tuning into the clear choice before them: a vision for America that prioritizes the needs of working people, that prizes our rights and freedoms, and that helps all communities get ahead, or a dark vision that drags us backwards and puts billionaires ahead of working families,” said DNC deputy communications director Abhi Rahman.
Some Harris ads amount to an implicit rebuke of Mr. Trump’s “radical” label.
One ad says she took on drug cartels as a prosecutor and will back tough border measures, including the hiring of new agents.
“Fixing the border is tough,” the narrator in a 30-second spot says. “So is Kamala Harris.”
Previously, Ms. Harris inundated Olympics coverage and shows like “The Bachelorette” and “The Daily Show” with an ad describing her as a “fearless” prosecutor who took on criminals in California.
The ad, which also ran in states that aren’t considered competitive, offered Ms. Harris a way to introduce herself to the nation after Mr. Biden decided to step aside.
Mr. Trump, speaking to Mr. Musk, said Ms. Harris cannot run away from her ties to Mr. Biden. He said Ms. Harris was supposed to fix illegal immigration but she failed across the board.
“She never even went there,” Mr. Trump said. “She could have shut the border down.”
Ms. Harris did visit the border in June 2021 in El Paso, Texas.
Republicans insist Mr. Trump is on track for victory.
“Democrats lit $200 million on fire to support Joe Biden, who was obliterated so badly by President Trump on the debate stage that he is no longer running,” said Republican National Committee spokeswoman Anna Kelly. “Democrats now have under 90 days to assemble a campaign around one of the least popular vice presidents in history.”
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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