Conservative PAC The Lincoln Project is out with a new ad condemning President Trump for his reported disparagement of the U.S. military and its veterans.
Though Trump has over the years repeatedly belittled the military’s top brass on the record—and in 2015 on the campaign trail notoriously said that John McCain was “not a war hero” because he was captured by the enemy—the latest firestorm comes in the wake of a report from The Atlantic headlined “Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers,’” that was published last Thursday—and then promptly confirmed by various other news organization, including the usually pro-Trump Fox News. (See “Here’s All the Corroboration for The Atlantic Story on Trump Attacking Troops,” via New York Magazine.)
As the mournful military standard “Taps” plays in the Lincoln Project ad titled “Un-American,” and as we see scenes of military funerals, military cemeteries and soldiers in active duty, an announcer says in voice-over,
Losers. Suckers. Dopes. Babies. That’s how Donald Trump describes our men and women in uniform. Even Fox News confirms he said it. An American president would know our troops are defined by words like courage, honor, integrity, strength, patriotism, valor—and for so many, sacrifice. He’s a draft-dodger-in-chief who despises the men and women he supposedly leads. He insults their deaths and injuries with his contempt. He looks down on them for serving this nation—mocking them because there’s no money in it. Millions of Americans have served and sacrificed. Millions more have sent a family member off to war. Only Donald Trump mocks their deaths. Because Donald Trump is simply un-American.
As Ad Age has previously reported, 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 (see also: “Trump just demoted his campaign manager. Watch the weird personal attack ad that helped do him in”).
The Lincoln Project 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, a former 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 “Un-American” ad:
