Kamala Harris campaign to air anti-Donald Trump message — from his own people — on Fox

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A video clip of Pence speaking with Fox News host Martha MacCallum in March after Pence had withdrawn from the Presidential Primary shows Pence saying that “it should come as no surprise that” he “will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year.”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.