Donald J. Trump’s presidential marketing campaign is working this 30-second advert on tv stations in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Wisconsin this week at a price of $2.3 million, in keeping with AdImpact.
On the Display screen
The spot begins with a photograph of Vice President Kamala Harris wanting chagrined subsequent to a headline that, citing a CNN report, declares that “Kamala helps taxpayer-funded intercourse adjustments for prisoners” — and {that a} narrator reads in a scornfully disbelieving tone. Ms. Harris is seen forcefully explaining her place in a 2019 interview with the director of the Nationwide Heart for Transgender Equality.
The advert flashes to a photograph of Ms. Harris, edited to look as if she is standing beside a bald, mustachioed individual in a vibrant purple gown and lipstick — apparently a onetime Power Division official, Sam Brinton, who left the administration after being charged with baggage theft. Quotations from The New York Instances, ABC Information and PBS are proven to again up the narrator’s assertions, as is a questionnaire for the American Civil Liberties Union that Ms. Harris crammed out as a candidate in 2019. In a single body, a photograph of Ms. Harris carrying an admiring expression is proven alongside that of Rachel Levine, the primary overtly transgender individual confirmed by the Senate to a federal place. One other photograph, displaying what appear like orange-suited prisoners or detainees, is a publicity shot from the Netflix present “Orange Is the New Black.”
The advert ends with video of Ms. Harris alongside what seems to be a drag queen, earlier than chopping to scenes of Mr. Trump, flanked by males and a lady in fits, greeting uniformed blue-collar staff after which displaying off his signature to staff in exhausting hats.
The Script
Narrator
“Kamala helps taxpayer-funded intercourse adjustments for prisoners.”
Ms. Harris
“Surgical procedure, um…”
Interviewer
“…for prisoners.”
Ms. Harris
“… for prisoners. Each transgender inmate within the jail system would have entry.”
Narrator
“It’s exhausting to consider, but it surely’s true. Even the liberal media was shocked Kamala helps taxpayer-funded intercourse adjustments for prisoners and unlawful aliens.”
Ms. Harris
“Each transgender inmate would have entry.”
Narrator
“Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”
Accuracy
The advert precisely quotes Ms. Harris explaining her actions as legal professional normal of California and her views as a candidate within the 2020 Democratic primaries. It depends on each the videotaped interview and the A.C.L.U. questionnaire. But it surely omits some necessary context, specifically Ms. Harris’s emphasis within the questionnaire on the necessity to make sure that folks “who depend on the state for care obtain the therapy they want,” and her repeated assertion that “transition therapy is a medical necessity.”
The Takeaway
Mr. Trump is working exhausting to painting Ms. Harris as a far-left radical who’s out of contact with mainstream Individuals, a part of a broader effort to outline her negatively for the numerous Individuals who say they don’t but know sufficient about her and wish to be taught extra.
This advert seeks to perform that by utilizing gender fluidity, gender-transition surgical procedure and the photographs of trans folks as a cudgel towards Ms. Harris over a tradition battle situation that impacts comparatively few folks. It performs on anti-trans prejudices, inviting viewers to recoil from pictures of Ms. Harris alongside these of people that plainly don’t conform to conventional gender norms, to attempt to painting Ms. Harris herself as out of the peculiar.
For good measure, the narrator twice refers to Ms. Harris by her first identify, which is uncommon, and never by her surname.
