President Biden's campaign launched new television ads Monday focusing on the presumptive Republican presidential nominee's criminal convictions, launching its most aggressive effort yet to brand former President Donald J. Trump a felon.
The campaign said the ads are part of a $50 million investment it will make in battleground states in June. A growing number of Democrats are urging the president to more aggressively portray Trump as guilty.
“We're seeing Donald Trump for who he really is,” the ad's narrator says: “He's been convicted of 34 felonies, convicted of sexual assault, and committed financial fraud.”
The ad ends by framing the campaign as a choice that the Biden campaign is trying to etch in the minds of voters who are undecided about whether to vote for Biden, whose approval rating last week hit its lowest since taking office.
“This election is between a convicted felon who's only fighting for himself and a president who's fighting for your families,” the ad's narrator says.
Since Trump's trial ended last month, the president's Democratic allies have been engaged in extensive discussions about how to use the New York jury's verdict in their campaigns.
While Trump has frequently lamented his conviction in speeches at rallies and on social media, Biden has largely avoided the topic, except for a casual mention at a fundraiser in Connecticut this month. Biden has not attacked Trump's conviction in front of television cameras, but surrogates such as Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker have shown they are not shying away from it.
In just 10 days, Biden and Trump are set to face off in the first debate of the campaign, which the presidential campaign hopes will help solidify the idea among voters that the 2024 election will be a choice between Biden and his predecessor.
“Mr. Trump comes to the first debate as a convicted felon who continues to demonstrate his willingness to do whatever it takes to harm anyone and anything to bring more power and revenge to Donald Trump,” Biden campaign spokesman Michael Tyler said. “His entire campaign has been an exercise in revenge and retaliation.”
A Trump campaign spokesman said the Biden campaign's new ads suggest Biden was leading a coordinated attack on Trump, though there is no evidence to support that theory. In addition to the New York case, Trump is facing charges in two separate cases in federal court and one in Georgia.
“Joe Biden and his campaign are foolish enough to highlight how they have weaponized the justice system to attack the presidential front-runner and his opponent in an attempt to interfere in our election,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Chung said. “The Biden campaign has spent tens of millions of dollars on advertising, and the numbers have not changed.”
Trump has held a slight lead over Biden in most polls for months, but polls conducted in recent months by The New York Times and Siena College that interviewed about 2,000 voters found a slight shift in support from Trump to Biden since the former president's conviction.