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Kamala Harris is trying to rattle Donald Trump by releasing a scathing new campaign ad ahead of the highly anticipated debate Tuesday night.
In a bid to get under Trump’s skin before Tuesday’s debate, the Harris campaign released the ad titled “The Best People,” which features clips of former Trump administration officials slamming the ex-president and warning of the dangers he poses if elected to office again this November.
Former senior officials who appear in the aggressive ad include former Vice President Mike Pence, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, national security adviser John Bolton, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley.
“Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States,” Pence says in a clip from 2021 after the Capitol riots, followed by an interview where he says he will not be endorsing Trump this year.
Milley appears in a clip from a speech last year where he says: “We don’t take an oath to a king or a queen, or a dictator. And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator.” Bolton adds: “Donald Trump will cause a lot of damage. The only thing he cares about is Donald Trump.”
Harris shared the ad on social media and said: “Take it from the people who worked for him: Donald Trump is a danger to our troops, our security, and our democracy. He should never again stand behind the seal of the President of the United States.”
The ad will run on Fox News nationally, in West Palm Beach in Florida — the home of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago — and in Philadelphia on Tuesday, when he will face Harris in the debate.
“This ad will remind Fox News viewers, perhaps even a certain defeated former president himself, about how Trump’s own national security team can’t stomach him anymore because of how he’d put the country at risk,” said Harris-Walz principal deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks.
The ad seizes on several prominent Republicans who have endorsed Harris and shunned Trump in this year’s presidential election. Dick Cheney said last week that he would vote for the Democrat over Trump while Cheney’s daughter, leading Trump critic and former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney, has also called on fellow conservatives to vote for Harris in November.
A number of Trump’s former aides gave speeches at the Democratic convention, urging Republican voters at home to vote for Harris.
Meanwhile, a political action committee run by former Republican operatives is spending more than $11 million to blanket swing states with an ad campaign featuring former Trump voters explaining why they can’t support the ex-president in 2024.
The Republican Voters Against Trump campaign is spending $4.5 million in Pennsylvania, $3 million in Michigan, $2.2 million in Wisconsin, $1.5 million in Arizona and another $375,000 in Nebraska’s Second Congressional District (where a single electoral vote is up for grabs) to show a 30-second spot composed of testimonials from GOP voters who say they’re all voting for Democrat and Vice President Kamala Harris.
