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Trump Campaign’s New Ad Reveals Its Virus Strategy: Xenophobia
New Trump Attack Ad Falsely Suggests Former Governor Is Chinese
(32 minutes later)
President Trump has kicked off his general election advertising campaign with a xenophobic attack ad against Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive Democratic nominee, the opening shot in a messaging war that is expected to be exceptionally ugly.
WASHINGTON — A new attack ad by President Trump’s re-election campaign portraying former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. as soft on China includes an image of an Asian-American former governor of Washington State that appears to falsely suggest he is Chinese.
In a minute-long digital ad released late Thursday that relies heavily on imagery of China and people of Asian descent, the Trump campaign signaled the lines of attack it will use in its attempts to rally the president’s base and define Mr. Biden. The ad reprises accusations Mr. Trump has made that the former vice president’s family profited from his relationships with Chinese officials and presents selectively edited scenes and statements attempting to portray him as doddering and weak.
The image, which appears briefly, was pulled from a 2013 event in Beijing, where Mr. Biden, now the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, shared a stage with Gary Locke, the former governor of Washington, who also served as President Barack Obama’s commerce secretary and ambassador to China. Mr. Locke is Chinese-American.
For the president and his allies, the approach represents a pragmatic assessment of the coming race against Mr. Biden, the opponent who is least susceptible to their charges that the Democratic Party is too far outside the political mainstream.
“During America’s crisis, Biden protected China’s feelings,” the online ad says, presenting a montage of clips of Mr. Biden complimenting and praising the Chinese, including the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, and of a news segment accusing Mr. Biden of helping his son Hunter profit off Chinese investments. The picture of Mr. Biden and Mr. Locke is spliced in among the clips.
The new ad also shows that while the country has changed drastically in recent weeks amid a national health crisis, the president has not. He continues to lead the nation and run his campaign the way he always has: by belittling his adversaries and exploiting racial discord.
Mr. Trump’s campaign released the ad on Thursday at a time of rising xenophobia and violence in the United States aimed at Chinese-Americans, as bigots blame them and other Asian-Americans for the outbreak of the coronavirus, which originated in China.
While other presidents have used campaigns during periods of national trauma to try to unite the country, political strategists said that Mr. Trump was taking the opposite approach.
In recent weeks, Asian-Americans have been physically attacked, yelled at and spit upon; organizations have begun to track the incidents, though some have most likely gone unreported.
“They’re just going to run a white grievance campaign,” said Stuart Stevens, who worked on the presidential campaigns of the Republicans Mitt Romney and George W. Bush. “It’s not complicated. He’s losing with everybody but white men over 50.” Mr. Stevens added.
The Trump campaign defended using an image of an Asian-American to illustrate Mr. Biden’s ties to the Chinese, saying it was selected simply because “that’s the Hunter Biden trip.”
“Trump hasn’t changed,” he said. “He hasn’t changed in 30 years.”
Hunter Biden accompanied his father on the 2013 trip to China. Mr. Trump has repeatedly accused him of using his father’s official visit to further his own business interests, claiming, without evidence, that Hunter Biden walked “out of China with $1.5 billion in a fund.”
Mr. Biden amplified that criticism with a statement Friday, saying “The casual racism and regular xenophobia that we have seen from Trump and this Administration is a national scourge.”
“Donald Trump only knows how to speak to people’s fears, not their better angels,” he added.
Since the coronavirus started spreading in the United States, Mr. Trump has tried to steer the conversation over his response toward themes and issues he is most comfortable with like nationalism and border security. Until recently, he had been referring to the coronavirus as the “Chinese virus.”
Now, with unfounded claims that Mr. Biden and his family have profited from below-board business deals with the Chinese, Mr. Trump is attempting to link his political rival to his chief geopolitical foe at a time when there is rising xenophobia and violence in the United States aimed at Chinese-Americans.
“During America’s crisis, Biden protected China’s feelings,” the online ad says, presenting a montage of clips of Mr. Biden complimenting and praising the Chinese, including the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, and of a news segment accusing Mr. Biden of helping his son Hunter profit off Chinese investments.
The ad also includes an image of a smiling Mr. Biden standing alongside an Asian-American man — an apparent attempt to suggest that the former president has an inappropriately cozy relationship with China. But the man in the image is a Chinese-American, the former governor of Washington, Gary Locke, who also served as President Barack Obama’s commerce secretary and ambassador to China.
The picture, which appears briefly in between clips showing Mr. Biden socializing with Chinese officials and stammering through speeches, was taken at a 2013 event in Beijing where Mr. Locke and the former vice president appeared together.
The ad’s implication that Mr. Biden is soft on China is oddly timed, coming as Mr. Trump’s own stance toward China and Mr. Xi has been more positive. Mr. Trump has been complimenting Mr. Xi, and as recently as last week, the president described the two of them as close allies and good friends.
The Trump campaign defended using an image of an Asian-American to illustrate Mr. Biden’s ties to the Chinese, saying it was selected simply because Hunter Biden accompanied his father on the 2013 trip to China. Mr. Trump has repeatedly accused him, without evidence, of using his father’s official visit to further his own business interests.
“The shot with the flags specifically places Biden in Beijing in 2013,” Tim Murtaugh, a Trump campaign spokesman, wrote on Twitter, referring to the picture with Mr. Locke. “It’s for a reason. That’s the Hunter Biden trip. Memory Lane for ol’ Joe.”
“The shot with the flags specifically places Biden in Beijing in 2013,” Tim Murtaugh, a Trump campaign spokesman, wrote on Twitter, referring to the picture with Mr. Locke. “It’s for a reason. That’s the Hunter Biden trip. Memory Lane for ol’ Joe.”
Mr. Murtaugh did not address the fact that Mr. Locke is not Chinese, or that the ad presents the image with no context or explanation.
Mr. Murtaugh did not address the fact that Mr. Locke is not Chinese, or that the ad presents the image with no context or explanation.
Mr. Locke responded by accusing Mr. Trump of stoking hatred against Asian-Americans. “The Trump team is making it worse,” he said in a written statement. “Asian Americans are Americans. Period.”
The campaign’s attack on Mr. Biden for being soft on China also appears at odds with the president’s own positioning toward its leader, Mr. Xi.
In recent weeks, Asian-Americans have reported being physically attacked, yelled at and spit upon; organizations have begun to track the incidents. Mr. Trump’s rise has only pushed many Asian-Americans further into the Democratic Party, though they were once considered a fairly reliable Republican demographic.
Even as Republicans have been seeking to blame China for the spread of the coronavirus — the ad says it has been hoarding masks during what it frames as “America’s crisis” — Mr. Trump has been complimenting Mr. Xi. As recently as last week, the president described the two of them as close allies and good friends.
Some Democratic strategists said that the tone and nature of the Trump ad should serve as a wake-up call. The coronavirus pandemic and the human and economic suffering it has unleashed does not mean that politics as usual are on hiatus, they said.
“The relationship with China is a good one, and my relationship with him is really good,” Mr. Trump told reporters last week. The president added that he “will always assume the best” of China’s leaders.
“This should tell the Biden campaign and every other entity trying to beat Trump that we have to rethink the playbook,” said Kelly Gibson, a Democratic media strategist who advised the campaigns of Andrew Yang and Julián Castro. “So if Democrats don’t sink to his level, at least a little, we will be a sizable disadvantage. You can’t beat fear with logic, it has never worked and it will never work.”
Mr. Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have also stopped referring to the coronavirus as the “Chinese virus” or the “Wuhan virus” since his recent phone conversations with Mr. Xi.
A spokesman for the Biden campaign said Friday that it was “incredibly revealing that this ad comes from a president who spent weeks buying the Chinese government’s spin about containment of the outbreak, despite Joe Biden publicly warning him not to.”
The campaign noted Mr. Biden’s remarks on a CNN town-hall-style program on Feb. 26. “I would not be taking China’s word for it,” Mr. Biden said then. “I would insist that China allow our scientists in to make a hard determination of how it started, where it’s from, how far along it is. Because that is not happening now.”
Mr. Trump has pointed to his restrictions on foreign nationals’ travel from China to the United States, which went into effect Feb. 2, as evidence that he was taking the virus seriously at the time, though he also repeatedly played down the threat to Americans that month.
His campaign’s new advertisement drew immediate criticism online Thursday night.
Andrew Yang, the Taiwanese-American businessman who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination this year, denounced the ad and called out the Trump campaign for including Mr. Locke in it.
“Gary Locke is as American as the day is long,” Mr. Yang wrote on Twitter in response to a tweet by Edward-Isaac Dovere of The Atlantic highlighting Mr. Locke’s inclusion in the ad. “Trump rewriting history as if he effectively responded to the virus is utter garbage.”
