Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has released a high-profile new video ad they are calling Snapped, which attacks Donald Trump as a candidate who will stop at nothing to grab power again.
The aggressive, 30-second spot is voiced by an old Hollywood foe of the former president, the actor Robert De Niro, and will be distributed nationally.
Against a backdrop of dramatic orchestral music and news images from Trump’s presidency, the De Niro voiceover begins: “From midnight tweets, to drinking bleach, to teargassing citizens and staging a photo-op, we knew Trump was out of control when he was president, and then he lost the 2020 election and snapped.”
In relevant photographs, Trump is shown on his phone on Air Force One and at the podium in the White House briefing room in a notorious press conference in 2020 when he suggested that being treated internally with bleach might combat Covid-19. Then he is shown posing with a Bible outside what’s known as the Church of the Presidents, near the White House, after nearby demonstrations against racial injustice and police brutality, following the murder of George Floyd in May, 2020, had been violently cleared by the authorities.
Then it goes on to show the deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, when extremist supporters of Trump, encouraged by the then president, broke into US congressional chambers to try, ultimately in vain, to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory over him.
De Niro continues that Trump was “desperately trying to hold on to power”. Then adds: “Now he’s running again, this time threatening to be a dictator, to terminate the constitution.”
Footage of Trump shows him warning there will be a “bloodbath” if he does not win in 2024, and additional images showing a mob carrying pro-Trump and election-denying flags clashing with police.
“Trump wants revenge and he’ll stop at nothing to get it,” the voice of De Niro continues.
The US president then says in his voiceover: “I’m Joe Biden and I approve this message”. The closing image is Biden walking towards a doorway and saluting the troops that guard him.
