Ads That Could Sink Trump and Trumpism

Listen To This Story

I was talking the other day with Mary, a friend and reader whose siblings live in a deep-red Southern state and are mostly MAGA. She regularly attempts to find out what they think, and why, and to calmly reason with them. So far, they’re sticking to their guns, still reflecting the echo chamber in which they reside. 

No matter what she says or what facts she seeks to bring to their attention, they always reply that she seems to “have it out for Donald Trump,” whom they trust and believe in. 

Yet most of us know how bad the corruption, incompetence, viciousness, misbehavior, and dangers are. The latest Fox News poll registered Trump’s job approval at 36 percent, a record low in the network’s polling, and reported the top five issues about which voters said they are “extremely concerned”: government corruption (60 percent), inflation (58 percent), gas prices (50 percent), government leadership (49 percent), and health care (48 percent). 

And more people — double digits more — trust the Democrats to handle each of those. (Other polls show Trump sinking even lower, The Washington Post just reported 33 percent!) 

When will reality go front and center for the laggards — so much so that even a few of the least crazy MAGAs still in their silos begin to learn the truth? Changing the minds of a tiny percentage, including a comparative handful of the somewhat indifferent and the only marginally deluded, can, in what is expected to be a close election, save this country. 

Although the airwaves are polluted with ads trashing Democratic candidates, and inflating Republican ones, I haven’t seen any on national TV showing just how much Trump, with the full and enthusiastic cooperation of the Republican Party, has ripped giant holes in the very fabric of American society. 

The legacy media has increasingly toted up examples, but hasn’t been able to bring out the full horror — nor get the word out to where it is needed most. What will it take for those with the resources to make and air the ads that remind the population of the nature and extent of the carnage? 

Here, for illustrative or inspirational purposes only, I offer those who can get ads made quickly and aired or distributed on social media before Election Day a “starter package” of truths for this crucial moment in our history. I don’t pretend that any of this is new, but it all needs repeating, loud and clear:

• Trump lurched into the Iran war without a clear justification or an exit strategy — like a coked-up kid throwing a rock at a hornet’s nest. Americans are paying the price, every day in every way.
• Trump, always solicitous of the murderous dictator Vladimir Putin, is now going full Agent Trump, turning more and more against Ukraine, actually blaming its leader for Putin’s aggression against it, helping Russia through purchases of diesel, and, now, signing an executive order waiving the sanctions Congress just voted to impose against Russia. 

• Remains Putin’s good bro, even though Putin’s regime has helped kill Americans and wreak havoc in the Strait of Hormuz by providing satellite imagery and assisting Tehran with advanced drone technology, making them resistant to interception.

• Strip-mines the country on a regular basis. Environmental outrages of every stripe — eviscerating rules on clean water and air; toxic waste oversight; opening up national parks and forests to commercial exploitation, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; expanded fossil fuel extraction in offshore waters. And the latest — and most poignant — is the removal of long-standing trees from a public golf course in the capital to make way for a new Trump-approved links for the wealthy elite. 

• Undermines constantly our faith in elections by trashing our functioning voting system — as he himself is attempting election theft.

• Hides the truth regarding his election. His task force on voter fraud — after failing to find any — has turned to persecuting those who investigated him for his own actual efforts to nullify the legal vote in 2021.

• Takes advice on serious, even life-or-death issues, from conspicuously unqualified people. Some of them seem to have come in off the street, while others have irrelevant or dubious credentials. And in the meantime, fires the experts we desperately need to deal with crises — some of which he created. Just one example: We are dealing with one of the worst epidemics of measles in decades, and it was entirely preventable.

• Abandons efforts to protect public health domestically and globally. Gutted long-established life-saving efforts, from USAID to PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), creating the potential for greater spread of disease.

• Abandons all previous ethical standards, skimming, cadging, taking a cut personally while inviting relatives, friends, and supporters to cash in through their privileged positions and connections in government. Trump’s “made men” (and women) operate like the mob. Everyone who plays ball gets a “taste.” 

• Places in high positions those who traffic in reckless, baseless allegations against others. Exhibit ZZ, his latest here-and-gone press secretary, Katie Zacharia, whose social media posts repeated or shared unfounded accusations of pedophilia and cannibalism against prominent Democrats and Hollywood elites. 

• Promotes the idea that empathy and decency are “unmanly” — and that bullies are heroes. Savagely attacks anyone who criticizes him with vulgar insults, threatened job loss, and, sometimes, physical danger to themselves or their families. Trump said that government employees “leaking” to the media should be “shot.” What next? Will he require these proposed shootings to be live-streamed?

• Stokes irrational hatred of immigrants, creating public approval to give fascistic agents (ICE and Border Patrol thugs) great freedom to assault, detain, disappear, and even kill all kinds of people, from the very young to the very old, resulting in a major humanitarian crisis.

• Treats the Treasury like his personal piggy bank. Spends your taxes on things benefiting him personally. Like repurposing Border Patrol funds for TV ads praising himself, weeks before the midterm elections. 

• Behaves irrationally and acts on whims, constantly reversing himself, while making a mint for pals and family trading on inside information. Such instability can have grave consequences for the stock market.  

• Makes the government worse in every respect, though he ran on promises to make it better. Imagine a flood or fire victim holding a phone being told “Please hold. Your call is important to us. You are number 113 in line.” 

• Makes life harder and more expensive for average Americans in almost every way. Caused prices to go up, inflation to rise, canceled people’s health coverage, etc. 

• Transforms, with unspeakable tackiness, beloved national monuments, institutions, and structures into grotesque tributes to himself — destroying our heritage in the process. 

That’s a lot — and is, amazingly, a mere sampling. It’s hard to believe the opposition to Trump’s Reign of Destruction cannot do something with all this. 

Perhaps we can help it along by creating our own bumper stickers. Here, for your grim amusement, are some starter ideas:

Bumper Stickers 

Health care or Helipad? We made our choice!

Bombs or ballrooms? With Trump, you get both!

Bringing down prices on Day One (Thousand)!

We are proud of our Big, Beautiful Bill(ionaires)!

We’ll totally give you $5,000 if you help us fight socialism!

Our candidates may be corrupt grifters, Nazi sympathizers, and pedophile protectors, but at least they aren’t Muslims!

Something, something, something transgender!

We ❤️ data centers in your backyard!

Gold leaf for me, no more food stamps for thee!

Did you know there is a “b” in “dumb?” If not, vote for the GOP!

Struggling to make ends meet? The Trumps are crushing it, losers!

Vote GOP because we don’t need to see the rest of the Epstein files!

Vote for Trump… and may every day be another wonderful secret!