An anti-President Trump group of Republicans released a new ad showing GOP voters across the country attacking the president over his response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The video ad, released by Republicans for the Rule of Law on Friday, features GOP voters in critical states in the 2020 presidential election, including Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona, criticizing Trump.
“Even though I’ve been a Republican all my life, I can’t support Trump, and his response to the coronavirus is exactly why. He told us this infection would just go away, even as it ripped across other countries,” the voters say in the ad.
“He’s been lying to us about available testing. He has squandered the one advantage that America had: time to prepare. He says he puts America first, but it’s clear he only knows how to put Trump first. This is a crisis, and we need real leadership. Donald Trump is incapable of it,” they continue.
The ad will air as a commercial during “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday in Washington, D.C., the conservative group confirmed in a statement to the Hill.
Bill Kristol, director of Republicans for the Rule of Law, said in a Tuesday statement, “When President Trump lied about the coronavirus, about its seriousness, and about the government’s response to it, he damaged the very foundation of our government. The coronavirus is a threat to our people. But the president’s mendacity is a threat to our Constitution.”
Trump repeatedly told reporters earlier this year that the virus would “go away.” However, the White House released estimates this week that a best-case scenario with full mitigation measures in place is between 100,000 and 240,000 deaths in the U.S. amid the ongoing pandemic that has infected more than 1 million worldwide.
This is not the first time the conservative group has hit the president over his administration’s coronavirus response. An ad released last month shows the president, in addition to top administration officials including White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and Vice President Pence, between January and last month discussing the spread of the virus with a growing count of the confirmed cases of coronavirus in the U.S. overlaid throughout the video.