The Priorities USA PAC has updated its ad highlighting President Trump’s early response to the coronavirus pandemic. The original ad, titled “Exponential Threat” (see: “Trump really does not want you to see this ad. Or does he?”), simply quotes Trump’s recent history of public statements downplaying the coronavirus outbreak and maintaining that his administration had everything totally under control.
As Trump’s soundbites play, an animated chart shows the frightening escalation of the crisis, with coronavirus cases in the U.S. surging past the 30,000 mark. Last week, the Trump campaign suggested that TV stations airing the ad could lose their licenses―an apparently empty threat (in that everyone knows that such an action would be ruled unconstitutional in a country with First Amendment protections) that backfired, causing the ad to go viral across social media.