Republican Groups Are Trying to Reach Trump Through 'Fox & Friends' Commercials
LatestIt’s another day in our normal country with our normal president, who spends between four and eight hours every day poisoning his brain with cable news. As many have noted, Trump particularly loves Fox & Friends. So it makes sense that Republican lobbying groups are buying commercials on the network in an attempt to directly influence the president.
In a new ad that will run on Fox this week, a supposed Trump supporter, wearing a t-shirt and baseball cap, talks earnestly into the camera about why he voted for Trump, and his concerns about special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
“After eight years of President Obama’s weak leadership, I was ready for a tough leader,” the man says. “Now I hear you’re thinking of firing Bob Mueller or [Rod Rosenstein,] the deputy attorney general. It makes you look weak, petty and impotent to us Trump supporters. We don’t want someone that’s weak, petty or impotent — that’s why we voted for you instead of those other guys.”The idea that regular Trump voters are worried about the president’s obstruction of justice is pretty laughable. Most of them seem too busy digging up “racist” left-wing tweets, attending white supremacist marches, and driving themselves insane over invented conspiracies theories to keep up with the minutia of the charges against Trump and Russia—not that they’d believe them anyway. Most Trump supporters are happy to keep supporting the president despite the ongoing investigation, which many of them believe is a bunch of overblown nonsense.
The Swamp Accountability Project, a dark money group who has previously targeted Rep. Devin Nunes, funded the commercial. Their vague goals revolve around helping the president “drain the swamp,” as he promised during his campaign.
Liz Mair, a GOP consultant and strategist for the group, told HuffPost that Mueller is “the only investigator who has had significant interest and success in going after Russians who interfered in the 2016 election,” and will also help bring down “stereotypical Beltway influence-peddlers who were exactly the people voters rebelled against in 2016.” This isn’t a bad point—Mueller’s probe is already snagging Democrats in its net, in addition to Trump cronies. But the idea that Trump’s base cares is hard to buy.
That’s why this ad is targeted directly at our president. His base may blindly follow him into the abyss, but if you can convince him he thought of an idea organically during his daily news binge, well, you might just change his mind.