“Blood coming out of her… wherever.”
“Does she have a good body? No. Does she have a fat a**? Absolutely.”
“There has to be some form of punishment.”
Hillary Clinton is still dealing with a formidable primary foe on her left in Bernie Sanders, but her team — and plenty of supportive super PACs — are looking to her right, unveiling early attack ads exposing Donald Trump’s wildly misogynistic statements ahead of a much-anticipated general election battle.
One super PAC supporting Clinton, Priorities USA Action, rolled out a pair of hard-hitting television ads in the swing states of Florida, Ohio, Virginia, and Nevada hours before voting was underway in Kentucky and Oregon’s democratic primaries. Clinton and her backers have carefully calculated when, where, and how to go about releasing pricey television ads, which are no longer as effective as in previous election cycles. Case in point: In 2012 the same super PAC poured nearly all of its money into TV ads backing Obama, but this year reserved $35 million for digital ads. These new ads deviate from the norm: They’re blunt, perhaps just as blunt as Trump’s Twitter feed.
One of them, “Speaks,” features women lip-syncing to audio clips of Trump spewing insulting comments about women. The second ad, “Respect,” follows a similar pattern, but broadens the rhetoric to include Trump’s insults about Muslims and immigrants. These ads follow Clinton’s most explosive ad thus far, released earlier this month, which featured GOP leaders criticizing Trump.
Trump, on the other hand, has chosen a different route in attacking Clinton. He has targeted her repeatedly via his infamous Twitter account but has only released one ad, in which he made fun of her foreign policy stances by showing her barking like a dog.
Priorities USA released the pair of ads a few weeks ahead of schedule, a slight shift in strategy that Clinton’s supporters hope will give her an early edge by burying Trump’s chances with women voters (Campaigns are prohibited from coordinating directly with PACs.) A national CBS poll released in April showed Clinton leading Trump 58 percent to 31 percent among women.
Priorities USA, one of many outside groups spending money in support of Clinton’s candidacy, will be pouring a hefty $130 million into its advertising campaign against Trump in key swing states. Clinton is also anticipating a wave of donations from fundraisers who previously backed Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio — some have already started donating. Clinton spokesman Josh Schwerin did not deny the possibility that Clinton’s team could seek support from key GOP leaders such as Bush, whose super PACs left roughly $17 million on the table following his dropping out of the race.
Photo and videos: Priorities USA Action.
