Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign has aired this 30-second ad on television stations in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin this week at a cost, so far, of more than $450,000, according to AdImpact.
Here’s a look at the ad, its accuracy and its major takeaway.
On the Screen
Like most Trump campaign ads, this one opens with an stern-looking photo of Vice President Kamala Harris. Bold text appears on the screen beside her. It’s The New York Times logo, a mark of authority, over a fragment of a sentence from an article published on Aug. 22.
“Harris is seeking to significantly raise taxes,” reads the male narrator, underscored by ominous-sounding music.
A video — helpfully subtitled — shows Ms. Harris saying, “Taxes are gonna have to go up.” (It will be replayed seconds later.) No context is provided about whose taxes will have to go up. More unflattering photos appear of Ms. Harris bearing a pained expression, smiling alongside the unpopular President Biden, and seeming to smirk.
The ad closes by contrasting Ms. Harris unfavorably with her opponent. The tone of the music shifts from ominous to triumphant. Video shows Mr. Trump purposefully striding through a corridor in the Capitol as president, wearing a hard hat, touring a factory floor and shaking hands with fast-food workers. The narrator cites three of the most populist tax proposals from Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign: “No taxes on tips, overtime or Social Security.”
The Script
Narrator
“Kamala Harris is gonna significantly raise taxes.”
Ms. harris
“Taxes are gonna have to go up.”
Narrator
“Kamala’s plan will raise families’ taxes by nearly $2,600 a year. Under Kamala, prices have already soared. Now, she’d make it worse with even higher taxes.”
Ms. harris
“Taxes are gonna have to go up.”
Narrator
“President Trump will cut taxes, again. No taxes on tips, overtime or Social Security.”
Accuracy
It’s no mystery why the Trump campaign chose to truncate a sentence from The Times’s Aug. 22 article on Ms. Harris’s tax plan. The full sentence would not have made for good advertising copy for the populist Trump campaign: “Harris is seeking to significantly raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans and large corporations.” (Italics added.)
Those missing words constitute the central deception of the ad, one that is repeated throughout. Middle-class viewers would come away from the ad with the strong impression that Ms. Harris planned to raise their taxes and that Mr. Trump wanted to cut them.
But that’s not true. While Ms. Harris said in 2019 that she wanted to scrap Mr. Trump’s tax-cut law, the aspects of the law that she criticized were the tax cuts for corporations and for the top 1 percent of earners. Ms. Harris has since promised — as President Biden did — that no American earning less than $400,000 a year would see their taxes go up under her presidency.
The Takeaway
The strategic imperative of the ad is clear.
Mr. Trump’s campaign is spending more money advertising on the economy than on any other issue for a simple reason: The campaign’s internal polling shows that the economy — and in particular, concerns about the higher cost of living — is by far the most important issue for the undecided voters they are targeting in the seven battleground states.
This ad zeroes in on taxes to drive home the campaign’s overall message that Ms. Harris’s policies would result in voters having less money in their pockets. The way Republicans see it, if they are arguing over taxes, they are winning. The Trump team plans to put millions of dollars behind this ad, according to Mr. Trump’s senior adviser Chris LaCivita.
Some Democratic strategists don’t see it that way; the Biden pollster John Anzalone has advised Democrats to lean into the issue of taxes on populist grounds, by pointing out that Republicans want to cut taxes for big businesses and the rich. And it’s telling that the Trump ad makes no mention of Mr. Trump’s huge tax cuts for corporations, the heart of his 2017 tax bill.
The post Inside a Trump Ad Saying Harris Will Raise Taxes and He Will Cut Them appeared first on New York Times.