Conservative PAC The Lincoln Project today released a new ad titled “Hospital” (below) in the wake of President Trump’s COVID diagnosis and hospitalization—but it doesn’t make a single mention of Trump’s sui generis experience (e.g., unlimited state-of-the-art medical care, unparalleled access to experimental drug regimens, etc.). Instead, it focuses on how average Americans have died from the disease. The ad opens with a scene of a patient in a hospital bed that quickly fades to black as we hear the beep of a heart monitor. On-screen text reads,
A death from COVID is the loneliest death imaginable. No husband or wife. No son or daughter by your side. No sister or brother. No extended family or lifelong friends. No one to hold your hand. No one to ease your passing. Just a cold lonely hospital room. For too many this is how it ends today. Over 200,000 Americans have lost their lives to COVID. We could have stopped it. His lying is killing us. We have to stop it. Vote him out.
The ad is notable for its lack of a voice-over, and for the fact that it conspicuously doesn’t even mention Trump by name in the on-screen text.
As Ad Age has previously reported, The Lincoln Project, which was founded in 2019 by a group of veteran Republican political operatives, has become a major sensation this election cycle, producing a barrage of anti-Trump viral video ads.
Here’s “Hospital”: