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WASHINGTON — With the US economy faltering, President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign is switching gears and launching a seven-figure ad blitz heralding “a great American comeback,” The Post has learned.
The weeklong, nationwide advertising campaign beginning Sunday will praise the president’s handling of the coronavirus crisis and provide an “inspirational message about the unyielding resolve of Americans,” a senior campaign official said Thursday.
Low unemployment and a roaring financial market had been the bedrock of Trump’s campaign, but with unemployment claims reaching 30 million in the past month, the campaign will begin focusing on the tax cuts, deregulation and job creation the president ushered in before the crisis.
“Yes, we had a strong economic message prior to coronavirus and the economy being artificially interrupted, but that was one of the many accomplishments we could point to with President Trump,” the campaign source said.
The campaign will play to the president’s strengths, including his stance on strong borders, domestic manufacturing and the need to exit trade deals — all issues which have been highlighted by the coronavirus crisis.
It will also portray Trump, 73, as a job creator — someone who has “signed the front of paychecks for decades” — while hitting former veep Joe Biden on his vote for NAFTA, which some academics believe cost up to 850,000 jobs.
“The economy was part of a larger message of promises made and promises kept,” the campaign source continued.
“The only person that can bring America back to the greatness we saw under the first part of the Trump administration is President Trump,” they said.
It’s understood a second wave of ads, as first reported by Politico, will also paint Biden as soft on China as the Communist nation faces intense scrutiny from the international community over its response to the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan.
The campaign resisted airing ads critical of Biden during the coronavirus crisis, with advisors believing it would be a bad look for the president during the pandemic, one source associated with the campaign told The Post last month.
But after internal campaign polls this week showed Trump tied with Biden, 77, in battleground states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the campaign went into overdrive, the New York Times reported Wednesday.
Other recent polls have showed Trump trailing Biden by as much as nine points in a head-to-head matchup, but the president’s reelection campaign is dismissive of most polls, citing how inaccurate they were in 2016.
Biden’s trade deal legacies will be used to hammer the former veep particularly hard, which could hurt his standing in key Rust Belt states.
“Joe Biden was part of the Obama-Biden administration that oversaw the slowest economic recovery since World War Two,” the source said. “Joe Biden’s never brought through an economic recovery.”
“He helped shepherd China into the World Trade Organization, shipping jobs out of the United States, normalizing trade relations with China,” they said.
“Those things have cost American jobs so we can hit directly on Joe Biden’s record and clearly contrast that with President Trump.”
