President Trump’s Campaign Runs Ads In Washington, D.C. Market To Soothe His Anxieties, Staffers Claim
President Donald Trump’s campaign purchased ads that ran on cable networks such as Fox News and CNN in the Washington, D.C. market specifically to soothe his anxieties, according to anonymous staffers.
As The Daily Beast reported, the Trump 2020 campaign recently spent $400,000 on ads on the aforementioned news networks. They’ll air on affiliate stations in Washington as well as the city’s suburbs in Maryland and Virginia.
Daily Beast writers Lachlan Markay and Asawin Suebsaeng describe the use of the campaign money in that market as “quixotic,” noting that they’re unlikely to sway voters in solidly blue Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.
However, purchasing the ads on Fox News effectively guarantees that Trump will see them, as he’s known to be a fan of the right-leaning network. That they’ll appear on CNN and other cable networks in the region also means that they’re likely to be seen by members of both houses of Congress.
Officially, that’s the point: by purchasing ads that will be seen by Trump’s allies in Congress, says a campaign spokesperson, Trump’s allies will have his message reinforced.
“We want members of Congress and our DC-based surrogates to see the ads so they know our strong arguments for President Trump and against Joe Biden,” said Tim Murtaugh, the campaign’s communications director.
Unofficially, however, the ads are intended for an audience of one: Donald Trump himself.
Two unidentified sources, one described as a Trump campaign adviser and the other reportedly an individual close to the president, said that the ads are intended to ease Trump’s anxieties.
The sources claim that Trump has been growing “distraught” in recent weeks as his poll numbers plunge in the wake of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the George Floyd protests.
By strategically placing the pro-Trump ads in such a way as to virtually guarantee that he’ll see them, Trump’s team hopes to soothe the reportedly distraught POTUS.
The ads are also intended as a counter to anti-Trump ads that have been produced recently by the Lincoln Project, a group of disaffected Republicans. Led by George Conway they want to see Trump voted out of office. One recent Lincoln Project ad entitled “Mourning in America” ran in the D.C. market.
Conway himself seemed to effectively admit that the intended audience for the ads included Trump.
“I was thinking, ‘Well, why can’t you just run an ad on the cable provider for the White House, so that some certain individual would see it?'” he said.
