Did you see the brutal attack ads Trump launched against Biden?

New media in the United States focused heavily on Joe Biden's poor performance during his historic debate with Donald Trump on June 27th but few have looked at the brutal attack ads the Trump campaign launched against Biden that night.

Trump and his campaign team took advantage of an opportunity created by CNN to allow commercial breaks and chose to run two devastating ads that took aim at Biden's age and a few prominent policy failings.

That’s right, for the first time in years, the presidential debates featured commercial breaks and Trump took full advantage of the airtime to run two ads that attacked Biden in two deeply damaging ways. 

One ad entitled ‘Who’s Laughing Now’ was released online by Trump’s campaign team just hours before the debate and it depicted Biden in some of his worst moments over the last two years and paired it with silly music and a nasty voiceover. 

Screenshot Credit: YouTube @DonaldJTrumpforPresident

The 30-second ad featured images from when Biden stumbled over the staircase of Air Force One as well as his well-known bike incident that saw the President fall off his bike in Delaware and a brief clip of Biden looking lost on stage. 

Screenshot Credit: YouTube @DonaldJTrumpforPresident

“Do you think the guy who was defeated by the stairs … got taken down by his bike … lost a fight with his jacket … and regularly gets lost … makes it four more years in the White House?” a narrator says according to a quote from The Hill. 

Screenshot Credit: YouTube @DonaldJTrumpforPresident

The ad then went on to drive the point home that Biden wasn’t fit for office and anyone who voted for him again was really just voting for Kamala Harris, insinuating that Biden wasn’t going to make it through to the end of his second term. 

Screenshot Credit: YouTube @DonaldJTrumpforPresident

“And you know who’s waiting behind him, right?” the narrator explained as a picture of Kamala Harris smiling entered the frame of the ad. “Vote Joe Biden today, and Kamala Harris tomorrow.” 

Screenshot Credit: YouTube @DonaldJTrumpforPresident

The Hill’s Brett Samuels pointed out that Trump’s ‘Who’s Laughing Now’ ad drives home a point that many Republicans have expressed concerns about Biden and it now looks to be somewhat prophetic since Harris has emerged as a possible person who could replace Biden if the public can't overcome his shortcomings. 

Trump’s second ad was just as impactful and it hit Biden on the perceived problems in the economy, asking viewers to consider whether or not they were better off financially now with Biden as President before featuring headlines of several issues. 

Screenshot Credit: YouTube @DonaldJTrumpforPresident

Headlines featuring high inflation, the situation at the southern border, and the American withdrawal from Afghanistan were all present in the ad, highlighting some of the biggest problems the United States has faced under Biden’s leadership.  

Screenshot Credit: YouTube @DonaldJTrumpforPresident

The ad’s narrator asks viewers to also question if they and their families are safer or if the country is more secure before adding: “After four years of failure under Joe Biden, it’s time to make America prosperous and strong again.”

Screenshot Credit: YouTube @DonaldJTrumpforPresident

The Telegraph’s Lauren Fedor noted Trump’s ‘Promises’ ad struck at one of the former president’s central pitches for voters, namely that he is more competent than Biden on the economy and foreign policy, an argument Fedor said some polls at the time supported though she did not list those polls. 

Trump was only able to debut his new ads during this presidential debate because CNN allowed two commercial breaks during the 90-minute debate, a departure from previous presidential debates when they were run by the Commission on Presidential Debates. 

CNN was reportedly seeking $1 million dollars per ad run during the presidential debate according to Semafor and was also offering a second tier of ad buy that would cost $1.5 million dollars. 

“The package includes a branded countdown clock, advertiser on-air billboards, co-branded tune-in promotions, a 30-second pre-debate ad slot, a 30-second ad during the debate, and one after,” Semafor’s Max Tani reported. 

The Biden campaign also announced its plans for a seven-figure multimedia campaign on June 27, the day of the debate, centered around reminding Americans that Trump is a convicted criminal and focused on sending people to a website on Trump’s policies. However, Biden's planned media blitz was likely drowned out by his poor performance.  

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