The Power of Political Ads at play as Trump Has Weekend Freaks out over ‘horrible’ TV commercials
It wasn’t the best of weekends for Donald Trump as he spent at least part of his it yelling at the TV and releasing a new rant calling out Fox News for running ads critical of him.
“What good is it if FOX News speaks well of me when they continually allow horrible and untruthful anti-Trump commercials to be run — and plenty of them,” Trump said in a statement. “In the good old days, that would never have happened and today it happens all of the time.”
It’s not clear which ad triggered the former president, but several anti-Trump groups have been running spots critical of him and his supporters in Congress, often airing them on Fox News in hopes he’ll see them.
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The progressive PAC MeidasTouch said it was one of their spots, airing on the right-wing network in the market where Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort is located:
“We just broke Trump,” the anti-Trump organization crowed in another tweet. “We didn’t think we could break him any more than we already had. But we did.”
The Lincoln Project, a group of never-Trump conservatives, said it could’ve been one of their spots.
“We’re always running ads on Fox News in Bedminster [New Jersey] and Mar-a-Lago area cable,” co-founder Rick Wilson told Mediaite. He said the ads were part of the group’s “audience of one” strategy.
The group has long run spots specifically meant to be seen by that audience of one ― Trump ― and cause him to react.
Other groups, including the conservative Republican Accountability Project, have also run strategic ads against Trump and his congressional enablers, so there are no shortages of suspects.
Trump’s attack on Fox News comes days after he unveiled a new company that could ultimately pursue the same viewers ― and the same advertisers. Trump’s newly announced Truth Social will first attempt to be a right-wing rival to Twitter.
But the company is also planning online streaming services, including one with a subscription tier that may be positioning itself as a rival to Fox News’ own subscription streaming service Fox Nation.
He’s reportedly been looking to take on Fox for some time, with Axios reporting last year that he wanted to “wreck” the right-wing network , which he believes hasn’t been supportive enough, with his own competing content.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
