Donald Trump's Campaign Is Pretending There's No Pandemic

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trumps-campaign-hasnt-aired-a-single-television-ad-about-the-pandemic-pandemic_n_5f21f180c5b6a34284b61405

President Donald Trump’s campaign advertising is focused largely on issues that are of minimal concern to the American electorate, a HuffPost analysis of campaign ad spending data found, airing zero ads about the coronavirus pandemic in the month of July.

Trump is trailing former Vice President Joe Biden in public polling, and Republicans and Democrats alike are pointing to the utter irrelevance of much of the campaign’s messaging as a key reason why he is now a steep underdog to win a second term in the White House.

As the pandemic swept across the sunbelt states over the course of July, and the death total has climbed to more than 150,000 Americans, Trump and his campaign have devoted much of their energy to issues other than keeping Americans safe from the virus or rebuilding the economy afterward: painting Biden as a senile tool of the Democratic Party’s left wing; protecting statues of historical figures with ties to the Confederacy; making blatantly racist appeals to voters while repealing a little-known rule encouraging the construction of affordable housing in the suburbs; continuously litigating the investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign and cracking down on protests around the country.

The data, from the ad tracking firm Kantar/CMAG, is clear. From July 1 to July 26, Trump spent more than $38 million to air television ads on broadcast and cable television networks. Not a single dollar went to ads dealing with coronavirus. The campaign’s official super PAC spent another $1.9 million on ads. Just $800,000 worth of their advertising dealt with the pandemic.

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