Conservative PAC The Lincoln Project is out with a new ad (below) slamming President Trump for calling for the destruction of an iconic American company because “his feelings got hurt.”
As Ad Age’s E.J. Schultz reported on Wednesday, “Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. is the latest brand to feel heat from Donald Trump’s tweets” when the president that morning “urged his followers to boycott the company, claiming it banned his signature red ‘Make America Great Again’ campaign hats” in the workplace while supposedly allowing Black Lives Matter attire.
Goodyear responded that that directive did not come from corporate, but that it does ask “that associates refrain from workplace expressions of political campaigning for any candidate or political party”—which, of course, is pretty standard practice at companies, both large and small, across the country.
Cue The Lincoln Project, which today dropped an ad titled “Goodyear” that puts Trump’s Twitter tantrum in context. As we see stark scenes from Goodyear’s home state of Ohio (e.g., an image of the Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank) and Ohio-related stats on-screen (“Another 35,000 file for unemployment in Ohio”), an announcer says in voiceover,
172,000 dead from COVID.* Millions unemployed, facing foreclosure, evictions and losing health coverage. Times in Ohio are getting tough. Donald Trump is making it worse, demanding a boycott to put Goodyear out of business. That’s 3,300 union jobs—jobs that sustain families all over Ohio. Why? His feelings got hurt. Trump talks a good game, but he’s not on our side. Never has been, never will be.
*On-screen text makes clear that death toll is across the U.S., not just in Ohio.
The Lincoln Project has become a major sensation this election cycle, producing a barrage of viral video ads that not only attack Trump but members of his inner circle (e.g., “Trump just demoted his campaign manager. Watch the weird personal attack ad that helped do him in”).
The Lincoln Project, as Ad Age previously reported, launched in December with an op-ed in The New York Times headlined “We Are Republicans, and We Want Trump Defeated” (subhead: “The president and his enablers have replaced conservatism with an empty faith led by a bogus prophet”). The NYT bio line for the op-ed’s authors—George T. Conway III, Steve Schmidt, John Weaver and Rick Wilson—noted that they “have worked for and supported Republican campaigns.” Conway is married to Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president in the Trump White House. “I don’t know what Kellyanne did to her deranged loser of a husband, Moonface,” Trump tweeted on May 5 in the wake of the release of a previous Lincoln Project ad, “but it must have been really bad.” Trump’s public anger about that earlier anti-Trump ad, titled “Mourning in America,” helped it go viral.
Here’s the “Goodyear” ad:
