A super PAC aligned with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) released a television ad Sunday attacking Donald Trump as a liar facing legal peril and features an image of the former president, looking down as a red tie hangs loosely around his open collar, as a narrator asks, “What happened to Donald Trump?”
The ad from the group Never Back Down is the clearest sign that the governor, despite recent missteps, plans to enter the Republican presidential primary and directly challenge Trump, who so far has been the clear front-runner as he makes his third run for the presidency. Last week, the group also released a video saying Trump “abandoned us” and joined Democrats in supporting “gun control.”
Sunday’s ad is the highest-profile, and most direct, attack on Trump so far. It ran as a one-time ad buy on “Fox News Sunday.” It spotlights what leading Republicans believe are the vulnerabilities of the party’s most dominant, and troublesome, figure: legal challenges that can be distracting, Trump’s undisciplined comments, and worries about whether he is up to the task of challenging Democrats.
The ad starts by reminding viewers that Trump is facing criminal charges, albeit from a “Democrat prosecutor in New York.” It then asks, “So why is he spending millions attacking the Republican governor of Florida?”
The ad quickly pivots to Trump’s behavior, rather than focusing on the merits of the case or going after the prosecutor as many Republicans have. The case centers on Trump’s payments during the 2016 campaign to an adult-film star to prevent her from discussing their alleged affair. Immediately after Trump was indicted by a grand jury in Manhattan, Trump’s team sent a flurry of fundraising emails that buoyed his campaign coffers. The former president has denied the affair and pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges.
Trump also faces ongoing cases in Georgia and Washington related to his refusal to return classified documents after leaving the White House, his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and his role in the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Though several Republicans have announced their candidacy or signaled plans to run, Trump has been attracting the most attention, which worries some stalwart Republicans.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), who has fought Trump since rebuffing the president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in that state, told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, “if we get distracted” and talk about topics like the investigations into Trump, “that only helps Joe Biden. It does not give us a path for Republicans to win.”
Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump’s campaign, said in a statement: “DeSantis is colluding with his globalist handlers to go full Never Trump in order to gaslight the people into thinking that Medicare and Social Security should be ripped away from hard-working Americans. President Trump has made it clear that he will always stand on the side of Americans, and protect benefits seniors worked for and paid for their entire lives.”
The Never Back Down ad, which was first reported by Axios, also asserts that Trump is stealing Democrats’ playbook by spreading false claims about DeSantis’s wanting to cut Social Security.
“Trump should fight Democrats, not lie about Gov. DeSantis,” the narrator intones. After showing a clip of DeSantis saying in March, “We’re not going to mess with Social Security,” the ad shows Trump saying entitlement reform “at some point will be” on the table, and “we will take a look at that.”
Erin Perrine, communications director at Never Back Down, said in a statement, “The ad is right: what happened to Donald Trump?”
The ad comes after attacks on DeSantis by Trump and his allies. Last week, a Trump-aligned group, inspired by a Daily Beast report, released an ad showing a man eating chocolate pudding off his fingers, as a narrator says, “Ron DeSantis loves sticking his fingers where they don’t belong.” The group MAGA Inc. spent more than $450,000 to run the ad in Washington, Houston, parts of Florida and New York, according to data from AdImpact, which tracks campaign ads.
Trump himself has attacked DeSantis as an ungrateful turncoat whom he helped elect as governor of Florida in 2018. Trump also claimed, without evidence, that when DeSantis asked for Trump’s support, he was in tears.
DeSantis, who has avoided directly responding to Trump, is looking to regain his footing from a pair of setbacks.
He initially downplayed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a “territorial dispute.” After blowback from Republicans, DeSantis said his statement, which was read on air by Fox News host Tucker Carlson, had been “mischaracterized.” “Obviously, Russia invaded (last year) — that was wrong,” DeSantis later told another host affiliated with the outlet.
And on Sunday, Thomas Peterffy, a major Republican donor, told the Financial Times that he was stopping his financial support for DeSantis’s all-but-announced presidential efforts because of DeSantis’s “stance on abortion and book banning.”
DeSantis in January rejected Advanced Placement courses in African American studies, calling it “woke” curriculum and an example of progressive “indoctrination.” This month, he signed in private a law banning nearly all abortions in Florida after six weeks, one of the most restrictive laws in the nation.
