Priorities USA Action Releases New Bilingual Digital Ad Using Donald Trump’s Admission That He Downplayed the Coronavirus
New recordings of interviews conducted by the Washington Post‘s Bob Woodward confirm what many Americans have known for months: Donald Trump lied to us knowingly and consistently throughout his entire presidency. He downplayed the coronavirus despite knowing the threat was deadly in order to protect his reelection, and many more Americans have died as a result.
“Cover Up,” a new digital ad from Priorities USA Action, puts Donald Trump’s abhorrent admission in context. Over 190,000 Americans have died, millions have lost their jobs, and new outbreaks of infections are still forming in thousands of communities. Donald Trump knew how deadly the coronavirus was, how easily it could spread, and how much havoc it would wreak on the lives of the American people. Still, he continued to say that it would “go away,” claimed it was a hoax, and erroneously compared it to the flu long after he privately admitted the coronavirus was far more harmful. The ad will run in English and Spanish across battleground states including Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Arizona.
Priorities continues to invest $4.25 million per week on TV and digital advertising countering Donald Trump’s campaign of misinformation and has been holding Trump accountable for downplaying the virus for months. Memorably, the Trump campaign sued Priorities USA and a small Wisconsin TV station for an ad that features many of Trump’s attempts to downplay the virus as it spread unchecked throughout the country.
“What these recordings reveal is not ignorance, it is evil. Donald Trump admitted, on tape, that he lied to protect his own reelection at the expense of American lives,” said Guy Cecil, Chairman of Priorities USA. “Trump let thousands of Americans die, watched as millions lost their jobs, and plunged our country into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, all to avoid telling the American people the truth and having to put in the work to solve the problem. Donald Trump is unfit for office — and Priorities is doing everything we can to ensure that we defeat him in November and elect Joe Biden as our next president.”