WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump’s campaign has virtually disappeared from the airwaves as he undertakes “a review and adjustment of campaign strategy” as one official put it after the replacement of campaign manager Brad Parscale.
With less than 100 days until election day, the Trump campaign spent virtually nothing on television or radio ads on Wednesdays and Thursdays, according to data from Advertising Analytics. And indeed it has nothing reserved until August.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden’s campaign has spent $ 3.9 million on those two days and has another nearly $ 6 million set aside until the end of August.
When asked about the lack of spending, a Trump campaign official pointed to the decision earlier this month to demote Parscale and raise campaign deputy director Bill Stepien to fill that role.
“With the change in leadership in the campaign, a review and fine-tuning of the campaign strategy is understandable. We will return to the air shortly, further exposing Joe Biden as a puppet of the radical left,” he added. official told NBC News.
As part of a broader strategy to shift the public’s focus from coronavirus to fear of crime and lawlessness, the campaign so far has put most of its money in a place that attacks Biden by so-called Democrats for ” fire the police. ” Advertising Analytics data shows the campaign has spent nearly $ 17 million to run the spot on broadcast and national cable since early July.
The place envisions a police department cut by budget cuts that asks victims of serious violent crimes to leave a message and receive a response from officers in five days.
But the ad says that “Biden supporters are fighting to dismantle the police departments.” Biden himself has said he does not support general cuts to departments, but agrees with activists calling for reallocation of police funds to other public programs and conditioning at least some federal funds for reforms.
Even before the hiatus, there were signs that the Trump campaign was changing its advertising strategy amid the president’s delay in recent polls.
After spending hundreds of thousands of dollars per week running ads in Michigan through June and mid-July, the campaign dropped to just $ 78,000 for the week of July 14 and less than $ 10,000 the week of July 21.
Recent Fox News and CNN polls have found Trump follows Biden by a 9-point and 12-point margin among registered voters in Michigan in recent days.
The campaign had also made other changes to advertising spending in the weeks leading up to this break, increasing spending in Iowa, Georgia, Florida and Ohio since mid-June.
While the Trump campaign has been off the air, his allies have not been obscured. America First Action, the campaign’s most aligned super PAC, spent $ 1 million in the past two days, while Restoration PAC, another super PAC, spent $ 360,000.
And the campaign still has the $ 146.6 million in general election television and radio spending set aside from Labor Day through Election Day.
But America First Action has been overspent by other Democratic PACs in recent months, causing increasing anxiety among Republicans. Super Democratic PACs have spent nearly four times as much on television and radio as America First, and the trend is expected to continue, according to advertising spending figures through the end of last week.
