As President Trump deploys federal agents in Portland, Oregon, and threatens to send more to other cities, his re-election campaign is spending millions of dollars on various sinister television commercials that promote fear and fit his political message of ” law”. . “
The influx of agents in Portland has led to scenes of confrontations and chaos that Trump and his White House aides have pointed to in trying to polish a false narrative about elected Democratic officials allowing dangerous protesters to create widespread chaos.
The Trump campaign is conveying that message with a new ad that attempts to link its shadowy representation of Democrat-led cities to Trump’s main rival, Joseph R. Biden Jr., with exaggerated images intended to persuade viewers that lawless lawlessness will prevail. if Mr. Biden won the presidency. The ad simulates a burglary at an older woman’s home and ends with her attack while waiting for a 911 call to wait, while dark and dark intruders blink in the background.
So far, the campaign has spent nearly $ 20 million over the past 20 days on that ad and two other similar ones, more than Biden has spent on his total television budget in the same time period, and a relatively large sum for this stage. Although the announcements predate the federal actions in Portland, they convey a common theme of illegality under the Democratic leadership.
The focus of the Trump administration in recent days has been on Portland, where there have been nightly protests for weeks denouncing systemic racism in the police. In recent days, federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Marshals, who were traveling in unmarked cars, dragged protesters off the street without explaining why, in some cases they were detained and in other cases. they were let go because they weren’t really suspicious The protests have grown in size since the arrival of federal officials.
Trump’s deployment of federal law enforcement is very unusual: He is acting despite local opposition (city leaders are not asking for help), and his actions go beyond emergency measures taken by some US leaders. such as President George HW Bush, who sent troops to quell Los Angeles in 1992 at the request of California officials.
In Washington on Tuesday, Department of Homeland Security officials held a press conference for the first time to address the surge in federal deployment in Portland, defending tactics and training of officers. Chad F. Wolf, the acting secretary, said a federal statute allowed officers to stay away from the court they had been told to defend, to investigate crimes against property and federal officials, even if it resulted in the arrest of a protester.
Another senior official, Mark Morgan, questioned claims that officers lacked proper insignia, showing reporters a camouflaged ballistic vest labeled “POLICE.” Wolf also blamed local officials for the riots in Portland. “I asked the mayor and the governor, how long do you think this will continue?” Mr. Wolf said. “We are ready. I am ready to get my officers out of there if the violence stops. ”
The president has said he could deploy federal agents in Chicago, and has listed other cities where a similar application could take place, including New York, but also Philadelphia and Detroit, urban centers in two battlefield states. White House officials said the deployments had stemmed from meetings between administration officials after protests in Washington, DC, in late May and early June.
The White House has defended recent measures.
“By any objective standard, violence, chaos and lawlessness in Portland are unacceptable, but Democrats continue to put politics above peace as this president seeks to restore law and order,” said the press secretary for the White House Kayleigh McEnany at a briefing on Tuesday morning. She listed a series of articles that she said protesters had thrown out law enforcement officers.
Trump administration officials and campaign aides have joined the protests that began after the murder of George Floyd in May to try to reinforce their claim that under Mr. Biden, the police would be “condemned.” While Biden has followed a careful line and has explicitly said that he does not support underfunding police departments, the Trump campaign has continued to claim otherwise.
The latest Trump campaign ad, depicting burglary at a woman’s home, has a singular goal: to terrorize the viewer into believing that claim.
The audio of the announcement includes a news broadcast that talks about “Seattle’s promise to refine its police department,” referring to another progressive city that Mr. Trump has had a fight with.
The ad shows Trump’s preference for messages that promote fear and division, dating back to the first announcement of his 2016 presidential campaign, which described immigrants as criminals. The campaign has already spent nearly $ 550,000 on its new ad, which launched on Monday.
Describing his opponents as supporters of violence while portraying police officers in brilliant terms has been a mainstay of Trump’s public discourse since the late 1980s.
Protests across the country have been largely peaceful, with peaks of conflict that generally arise in clashes with law enforcement. While polls show that most voters support the Black Lives Matter movement, Trump and some of his aides are countering a violent reaction, so far non-existent, with white voters in the fall that will increase the president’s numbers.
“Clearly, what they’re looking to do here is scare the older adults,” said Pia Carusone, a Democratic publicist. But, he said, Trump’s new announcement falls short of credibility. “You are assuming that the voter you hope to convince is going to relate and you think this could happen. And then you have to make the leap to blame Biden or the Democrats or whoever. And I think that first test fails. “
Stuart Stevens, a Republican strategist now working with the anti-Trump group known as the Lincoln Project, said the Trump team was focusing on an issue that does not rank first in voter concerns.
“I’d bet a lot that the actress they hired for this is more concerned about Covid-19 than about a false threat about cops,” said Stevens.
Of the $ 24 million that the Trump campaign has spent primarily on television ads in the past 20 days, approximately $ 20 million has been spent on ads that focus solely on the issue of police. About 70 percent of that $ 20 million was spent on a singular ad showing a split screen: one side shows an empty 911 call center, with an answering service asking callers to select their emergency, and the other shows violent scenes from the protests.
Trump’s digital gadget has also released a torrent of advertisements warning of a country in crisis: “Dangerous MOBS from far-left groups are running through our streets and causing utter chaos,” says one ad with 308 variations: “They ARE DESTROYING our cities and riots. “
The Trump team has spent at least $ 2 million in the past two months on Facebook ads with similar themes, according to Advertising Analytics, an ad-tracking firm.
The ads are on a political track. But for former Homeland Security officials who served in the first year of the Trump administration, seeing images of federal forces on the streets of American cities was heartbreaking.
“People like me, who served for a long time, have to search hard to determine who these people are,” said Colonel David Lapan, a retired marine who served in the Trump administration in 2017 as a Department spokesman. of National Security. “To the average citizen, it appears that the military is being used to repress American citizens. Even if that is not the case, and this is law enforcement, it creates the impression that the military is being used. “
In a statement Tuesday night, Biden paralleled the largely peaceful protesters who were removed from a park near the White House on June 1 by armed law enforcement officers using chemical irritants before the photo shoot. Trump in front of a historic church. .
“They are brutally attacking peaceful protesters, including a veteran of the US Navy,” Biden said of the force used in Portland. “Of course, the United States government has the right and the duty to protect federal property. The Obama-Biden administration protected federal property across the country without resorting to these heinous tactics, and without trying to fan the fires of division in this country. “In response, the Trump campaign accused Biden of attacking officials in charge to enforce the law.
Tom Ridge, the former Pennsylvania governor who was the first person to serve as secretary of Homeland Security, also condemned Trump’s actions.
“The department was established to protect the United States from the ever-present threat of global terrorism,” Ridge, a Republican, told radio host Michael Smerconish. “It was not established to be the president’s personal militia.”
Mr. Ridge said it would be a “cold day in hell” before he agreed to what is happening as governor. “I would like the president to take a more collaborative approach to fighting this illegality than the unilateral approach that he has taken,” he said.
Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed reporting. Jack Begg and Isabella Grullón Paz contributed to the investigation.
