Had to check online to be 100% sure the superPAC that mailed it was Trump-linked. I’ve never heard of Elissa Slotkin before, but apparently she’s a US rep for another district in Michigan. Our rep is Rashida Tlaib, who is Palestinian descent, so I’m guessing the PAC’s thought process in designing this was they don’t want to link Harris to our actual representative so just pick some other random rep nearby.
As someone who does not want Trump to be re-elected, it’s at least relieving to know how easy it will be for the democrats to counter these dirty tricks. All they need to do is have their candidate make clear public statements to clarify that she doesn’t want this linked to her campaign. Of course, she’ll have to clearly point out which specific parts are offensive, so people don’t just think she fine with antisemitism. Explaining that being anti-apartheid is not the same as being antisemitic is pretty straightforward though, so this should be no big deal.
This may be the only attack ad I’ve ever seen that hasn’t left me with a foul taste in my mouth. No name calling, no fear mongering or sabre rattling. Just a supportive campaign ad delivered to the wrong audience, pointing out things that that audience would likely find very offensive. Whoever thought this up needs a pay raise. But why the hell do they have to be working with Trump’s campaign?
In the primary the Trump campaign had a couple noteworthy attack ads against DeSantis, like the one that had no mention of policy and was entirely focused on the reports that multiple people witnessed DeSantis eating a cup of pudding with his fingers. I’ll also mention that the attack ad put out by Trump’s campaign like an hour before DeSantis did a twitter event with Elon Musk to announce his candidacy will be a topic of great interest to future historians trying to understand our culture.
My thought is that if Trump has any area of expertise at all, it’s being petty towards haters and losers. If there were any position under him where that man could actually discern between a sycophant and a competent employee well enough to make firings based on poor quality of work, rather than based on not kissing his ass or simply needing a fall guy, it would be this. A position like attack ad concept design, where the most crucial skill is your ability to talk shit about someone you hate.
I’m really skeptical he makes meaningful decisions or does much of anything anymore, he seems like he’s stopped caring and we’d probably be seeing discussion of mental decline if we hadn’t had such a long period of Trump being totally overshadowed by Biden’s extremely conspicuous mental decline. With that said, the culture around his campaign was formed well before this election.