Janelle Irwin Taylor
Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign for President is releasing a new ad Tuesday to run on Fox News during the presidential debate between her and former President Donald Trump.
The ad will feature several notable former staffers in the Trump White House who have since become fierce critics. That includes commentary from former Vice President Mike Pence, former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, former National Security Advisor John Bolton and former Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley. Each warns of the dangers Trump presents to the nation.
The placement on Fox News will target conservative viewers with the goal of convincing would-be GOP voters wary of another Trump presidency to cast a ballot for a Democrat. In addition to Fox, the ad will also run in local markets in Philadelphia, where the debate is being held, and in West Palm Beach, where Trump lives.
The ad, entitled “The Best People,” reminds voters that Trump said in 2016 that he would be surrounding himself with “the best people.” But now, those individuals are speaking out against him.
“This ad will remind Fox News viewers, perhaps even a certain defeated former president himself, about how Trump’s own national security team can’t stomach him anymore because of how he’d put the country at risk,” Harris-Walz Principal Deputy Campaign Manager Quentin Fulks said.
“To every American who understands the threat that Donald Trump poses, who cares about upholding the Constitution, who believes in the rule of law, and who knows America is stronger when it leads, there’s a home for you in Vice President Harris’ campaign.”
The litany of criticism lobbed at Trump in the ad begins with his former Vice President, who ran unsuccessfully for the GOP presidential nomination this year.
“Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President of the United States,” Pence says in the ad via audio from Aug. 1, 2023, after Trump was indicted on federal charges related to his role in attempting to overturn results of the 2020 election.
A video clip of Pence speaking with Fox News host Martha MacCallum in March after Pence had withdrawn from the Presidential Primary shows Pence saying that “it should come as no surprise that” he “will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year.”
Up next is Esper, who when asked by CNN anchor Jake Tapper whether Trump “can be trusted with the nation’s secrets ever again,” responds with a resounding “no.”
“It’s just irresponsible action that places our service members at risk, places our nation’s security at risk.”
Bolton is then shown speaking on CNN in September saying “Donald Trump will cause a lot of damage” and then again in another CNN appearance in October 2023 that, “the only thing (Trump) cares about is Donald Trump.”
It gets worse. Milley is then shown speaking during his final speech as head of the Joint Chiefs, blasting Trump as a “wannabe dictator.”
“We don’t take an oath to a king or a queen or a tyrant or a dictator. And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator,” he’s shown saying while in full uniform. In his full remarks from that day, Milley did not specifically reference Trump, but his remarks came just days after Trump suggested that Milley should be put to death.
“Take it from the people who knew him best: Donald Trump is a danger to our troops and our democracy — we can’t let him lead our country again,” the narrator says to end the ad.
In a press release announcing the ad, Harris’ campaign offered several additional examples of people formerly within Trump’s political circle later rebuffing the former President.
Examples include former Trump White House Chief of Staff John Kelly alleging Trump is “a person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators,” and someone who “has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.” Kelly added that Trump “truly believed, when he brought us generals in, that we would be loyal — that we would do anything he wanted us to do.”
Bolton offers another anecdote, saying that if Trump is again elected, “there will be celebrations in the Kremlin, there’s no doubt about it, because Putin thinks that he is an easy mark.”
Former Trump National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster previously accused Trump “and other officials” of “repeatedly” compromising “our principles in pursuit of partisan advantage and personal gain.”
Meanwhile, Esper also previously cautioned against voting for Trump, noting that “he puts himself first and I think anybody running for office should put the country first.”
The latest ad is part of the Harris campaign’s $370 million digital and television advertising blitz blanketing airwaves from Labor Day through Election Day.
14 comments
Manolo
September 9, 2024 at 10:56 am
An ad featuring the warmonger and the woke general who helped fumble the Afghanistan withdrawal…… I guess, if you have that much money to waste.
Michael K
September 9, 2024 at 11:01 am
Spot on, and in their own words.
And the list keeps growing, It’s telling that nearly half of the former Trump cabinet officials decline to endorse the twice-impeached former president. They know better than anyone else what the truth is.
Dont Say FLA
September 9, 2024 at 11:05 am
Turnip J Truck says he never even met them and they’re not his type
Alexa is Biased
September 9, 2024 at 11:26 am
Milley Vanillie should have been fired after the Afghanistan debacle. Other planners as well and remember it was Joe that signed off on it and pressured to do it. There is a report that was just issued on that absolute disaster. The very little I read did not show that operation in a positive light. Kammy was the last one in the room. Dumb and Dumber to blame?
Tom
September 9, 2024 at 12:41 pm
So you don’t think trump negotiating directly with the taliban setting the whole thing in motion with drop dead dates for the exit had anything to do with it? It’s a pity it was a cluster duck but it was always going to be and it had to end eventually. Wars … easy to start but hard to finish.
Alexa is Biased
September 9, 2024 at 2:47 pm
I haven’t read much of the report but evidently those drop dead dates agreed to were violated by the Taliban so evidently they no longer applied.
PeterH
September 9, 2024 at 3:12 pm
Forget about “the drop dead dates” ….. that is irresponsible but pretty irrelevant. Team Trump negotiated directly with Taliban terrorist for the American departure. The negotiations deliberately excluded the Afghan government and the Afghan military that we were funding! THE USA PAID THE SALARIES OF THE AFGHAN GOVERNMENT AND THE AFGHAN MILITARY. How would you expect the Afghan government and military to respond when we proceeded with the withdrawal? EXACTLY….. THE MILITARY REMOVED THEIR UNIFORMS AND THE SITTING AFGHAN PRESIDENT CAUGHT THE FIRST COMMERCIAL FLIGHT OUT OF KABUL….. If planning includes Trump expect a disaster.
Michael K
September 9, 2024 at 1:13 pm
“The very little I read…”
That sums up everything Miss Spoke posts. No borscht for her today.
Alexa is Biased
September 9, 2024 at 3:36 pm
You’ve read all 600 pages I’m sure. You probably read as much as Pelosi. 😜
rick whitaker
September 11, 2024 at 6:06 pm
MAGA MARK , how dare you disrespect a fine us general like that. you are a sniveling little punk for sure. where did you get your disrespect for the us military? has trump brainwashed you that bad? i have no respect for punks like you.
PeterH
September 9, 2024 at 11:34 am
Every day prominent Republicans and Independent voters are announcing their intentions to vote for Harris-Walz ticket. Voting in the USA is still a private affair ….. many Americans like myself who haven’t been impacted by the endless Republican hand-wringing about inflation, tiny increases in gasoline prices or the predictable turbulent exit from Afghanistan …… will vote for America’s continued economic growth and come to realize that our great nation’s economy is the envy of every country on planet earth.
Convicted felon Donald Trump has absolutely nothing to gain from this “debate” ….. his MAGA supporters have solidified and his blustering incoherent narrative doesn’t present any new opportunities to expand his political base. Like himself, Trump’s self-serving hateful whining is old, worn out and tired. He’s been ‘campaigning to stay out of prison’ for four years. We are all very familiar with his lies and strategy. As Trump’s former deceased lawyer Roy Cohn once said: “No public man can indefinitely survive in the center of a controversy.” This one statement will be predictive of Trump’s and hopefully MAGA’s rapid decline.
In closing, this “gathering Trump storm” has become meaningless and Republicans should prepare themselves for a blue tsunami for the foreseeable election cycles. That Project 2025 will not be going away …… and it will be a chain around the neck of every Republican in the midterms and 2032! Register to vote….. and vote!
Loitering frank
September 9, 2024 at 12:42 pm
Dumb policy. Tyrants and dictator’s. While 0 tolerances to humanity..
Narcissistic stealing America’s contravesies to get inside the borders.
Rules and laws are dictatorship.
But I still see the Quaker’s views
That made this place a more living place
P.s.i need to go back to work
Wanking here is getting boring
A Day without MAGA
September 9, 2024 at 1:19 pm
Engine number 9,going the down the Trump Train line,if your Trump Train go off it track,do you want your money back Google Trump Train Trial
Ocean Joe
September 9, 2024 at 1:35 pm
Backfire. All Trump cares about is himself, so they put his name out there, good or bad he laps it up like Trump Sparkling Water.
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