Ever since his start in politics, a big part of Donald Trump’s message has been that there’s a great deal of chaos throughout the country, and only he can time it. “I alone can fix it” was a claim Trump made during his 2016 run. In his inaugural address in 2017, Trump spoke of an “American Carnage” while declaring that it “stops right here and stops right now.”
But of course, urban unrest did not come to a stop when Trump was elected president. And Trump has also had to run against chaos, whether protests or COVID, that took place under his watch while he was still in office. This dynamic was laid bare this week with a new ad released by the campaign.
Trump’s campaign debuted an ad on Sunday, which states that the country has “gone to hell” under the presidency of Joe Biden. However, as pointed out by Politico, the ad contains footage from the George Floyd protests, including some in Seattle in the summer of 2020- when Trump, not Biden, was the sitting president. Protests on that level have not taken place at any point during the Biden-Harris Administration.
(POLITICO) – Donald Trump’s two-minute ad that aired during Sunday’s Philadelphia Eagles game and said the country had “gone to hell” during the Biden and Harris administration featured an image from a protest during Trump’s presidency, not Biden’s.https://t.co/USQkcnYRBG pic.twitter.com/EqqzXcGnBo
— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) October 27, 2024
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Asked by Politico about the discrepancy, Trump’s campaign stated “The riot imagery shows the same radical leftists that embrace the chaos in Kamala’s broken world view. President Trump will fix our cities, make the nation safe, and stand up to those whose ideology says this abhorrent action is OK.”
Usually, the tack taken by Trump’s side is to confine the chaos and dysfunction to “Democratic cities” and “Democratic states,” which can never be the fault of Trump, even though he was president at the time.
CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale pointed out this week that Trump’s campaign has a tendency to misleadingly edit quotes in their advertising.
Some Trump ads edit out key words from Harris quotes.
Another Trump ad depicts claims from Trump allies as quotes from news outlets.
Another ad uses a quote from an unrelated 2018 op-ed as if it’s about Biden-Harris.
Fact check on the repeat deception: https://t.co/3b8t3w20d8
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 25, 2024
“Multiple Trump ads omit critical words from quotes by and about Vice President Kamala Harris on the subject of tax policy. One Trump ad misleadingly depicts comments about fracking from Trump’s campaign and administration as if they were comments from independent news organizations,” Dale wrote.
Photo courtesy of the Political Tribune media library.
