“This election is between a convicted felon fighting only for himself and a president who’s fighting for your families,” the ad concludes after describing Biden’s efforts to cut health care costs and take on corporate power.
The Biden campaign also announced Monday plans to spend $50 million on advertising in June, including more than $1 million targeting non-white voters. That includes spots targeting Asian American voters on health care issues, ads showcasing Biden’s empathy for voters struggling with rising prices, and radio ads targeting black voters depicting Biden’s accomplishments. The Trump campaign is trying to catch up on fundraising and has not yet run any television ads for the general election.
Trump was convicted last month of 34 felony counts for trying to conceal payments to an adult film star to cover up an alleged affair. A New York jury found in 2023 that Trump sexually abused and defamed a woman who said he assaulted her at a department store in the mid-1990s. A New York judge in February imposed a penalty after finding that Trump engaged in business fraud in a second civil trial to borrow money at low interest rates.
Trump has denied wrongdoing in all those cases. He still faces trial on three other criminal counts related to his handling of classified documents and his attempts to disrupt the transition after the 2020 election.
The latest ad, titled “Character Matters,” builds on an argument the Biden campaign began making in May. The president and his campaign have argued that Trump has changed since he first won the nomination in 2016 and has become more focused on his own interests than the American people. Biden began the campaign saying “something is broken,” arguing that the change was sparked by Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election.
Biden aides see the debate as a way to counter polls that show Americans feel more favorably about Trump’s time in office than Biden’s, a finding that worries many Democrats. They hope that the argument based on the idea that Trump has changed will focus voters’ attention on how his personal actions since leaving office could affect his chances of a second term.
Polls and focus groups conducted by the Biden campaign and independent groups that support Biden have found that claims about Trump’s personal grudge and determination to seek revenge are among the most persuasive arguments with voters.
Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler on Monday described Trump as someone who would “do anything and anyone to harm Donald Trump in order to increase his power and his vendetta.”
“That is why he was convicted, that is why he incited a mob to storm the Capitol on January 6th, and that is why his entire campaign has been an exercise in revenge and retaliation,” Tyler said in a statement.
According to ad tracking firm AdImpact, the Biden campaign has already spent about $67 million on advertising through June 16, including $53 million so far this year. The scale of the ad spending has accelerated in recent weeks, from about $2.2 million spent in the week beginning April 30 to $5.3 million in the week beginning June 4.
Biden and Trump will face off in Atlanta on June 27 in the first of two scheduled debates, which will be broadcast on CNN. Unlike recent meetings of the presidential candidates, the debate will not have a studio audience and microphones will be muted throughout the event except when each candidate speaks, conditions requested by the Biden campaign and agreed to by the Trump campaign.
Monday’s announcements indicate that the pace of spending will continue to accelerate through the end of June. Just $12.4 million had been spent through June 16, according to AdImpact records, well below the $50 million goal the Biden campaign announced Monday for that month.
