3d ago / 7:32 PM UTC

More than $50 mil spent on political cable TV ads in D.C. this cycle, many targeting Trump

WASHINGTON — One unique repercussion of having a president who is an avowed cable news watcher is that a massive amount of money was spent in the Washington D.C. cable market in the 2020 election cycle, much of it targeting Trump himself. 

Analysis from AdImpact shows that advertisers spent $30.3 million on political TV ads on Washington D.C. cable in 2020 and $21.5 million in 2019. Those figures don’t even include spending on national TV spots still aimed at the president’s viewing habits, and also exclude spending by congressional candidates for districts that include a piece of the D.C. market. 

That kind of spending is significant — the 2020 sum alone is more than was spent on traditional advertising for any House race this past cycle (New Mexico’s 2nd District had $29.4 million in total TV/radio spending, although it should be noted that D.C.’s media market is far more expensive than most). 

And a deeper dive at the top spenders and their content indicates that many of these ads were directly aimed at reaching Trump, who regularly tweeted praise and criticism of the various news shows he watched, primarily on cable. 

The Lincoln Project, the anti-Trump group started by former Republican campaign hands in exodus, spent more than any other group on D.C. cable with $5.7 million. Many of their spots directly criticized the president for his handling of coronavirus or civil unrest, but it also spent money running spots specifically attacking top Trump campaign hands and criticizing the president for associating with them.

The ads were tailored directly at Trump, sometimes calling him out directly. And the tactics prompted responses from the president, who tweeted about the Lincoln Project ads on at least one occasion.  

Over the past few days, the Lincoln Project also started running a spot using Trump’s comments refusing to accept the 2020 election and putting them alongside violent imagery and rhetoric from last week’s pro-Trump rally and subsequent attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The group’s strategy prompted at least one Republican group to give them a taste of their own medicine — the conservative group Club for Growth Action ran a spot of its own in D.C. criticizing the Lincoln Project and its founders. 

Other groups directly called on the White House to make specific policy changes (sometimes targeting the president by name), like this spot from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on drug pricing’ one from Americans for Tax Reform specifically asking “Mr. President, please reject socialist price controls for Medicare Part B.”  A similar spot from Americans for Limited Government criticized a Trump executive order on health care as “every socialists’ dream” and accused the president of adopting socialism. And one from the Pebble Limited Partnership asked “President Trump” to “continue to stand tall and don’t let politics enter the Pebble mine review process.”

And Trump’s presidential campaign spent $1.8 million on cable ads in Washington D.C., despite the fact that the city votes almost universally Democratic in presidential elections and that most Republicans all-but wrote off neighboring Virginia in the 2020 presidential election. That spending sparked questions as to whether the campaign was running the ads so that Trump could see them while watching television

One other thing the spending figures don’t include: Those who targeted Trump while he visited his Mar-a-Lago getaway in Florida.

It’s not new to see groups spending on the airwaves in Washington D.C. in the hopes of trying to influence decision-makers. But what’s been a new feature of the Trump era is how directly many groups targeted the president himself, thanks to his well-known TV diet, to either try to convince him or rattle him. 

This content was originally published here.

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