Bloomberg Corrects Story Claiming Republicans Pulled Ads from Florida After Getting Whacked by Trump Campaign
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Bloomberg News on Tuesday corrected a story claiming Republicans had pulled ads scheduled to run in Florida in the closing weeks of the election.
The outlet initially claimed President Donald Trump’s campaign had pulled $5.5 million in ad spending from the state to focus on four Midwestern battlegrounds. It failed to note that spending had been replaced by $4 million in spending by the Republican National Committee for an aggregate total of $4.3 million.
Campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh promptly slammed Bloomberg on Twitter. “The Bloomberg story about Trump campaign ad buying is horribly wrong & must be retracted,” Murtaugh wrote. “It is wrong in every aspect. Not even a call to the campaign before publishing. They used quotes from me taken from a conversation on ANOTHER TOPIC. Sloppy reporting at the highest level.”
The campaign’s deputy communications director, Matthew Wolking, piled on with a reference to Mike Bloomberg, the news outlet’s billionaire owner, writing, “Mike Bloomberg’s company is spreading fake news about Florida advertising at the same time that Mike Bloomberg is advertising in Florida for Joe Biden.”
The campaign released an additional statement, noting, “We are up with six figures in local cable, six figures in Spanish language, and six figures on radio.” It also said the RNC’s announcement last week of a new, $55 million ad-buy represented a 40 percent increase over previous plans.
What a coincidence that Bloomberg News:
‼️ Adopted a policy of only investigating Trump during the Democrat primaries
‼️ Continues to cover the election while Mike Bloomberg attempts to buy victory for Biden
‼️ Ran a false story about Trump cutting Florida ads
See a pattern?
— Tim Murtaugh (@TimMurtaugh) October 27, 2020
Mike Bloomberg’s company is spreading fake news about Florida advertising at the same time that Mike Bloomberg is advertising in Florida for Joe Biden https://t.co/dyQFvfBUmz
— Matt Wolking (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@MattWolking) October 27, 2020
The article has since been updated with a correction saying, “Corrects story to include context that was missing from earlier version on additional spending planned by the Republican National Committee on Trump’s behalf.”
The news came Tuesday as part of data released by ad-tracking firm Advertising Analytics, which found a large part of Trump campaign’s cash would go to ads in Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
Biden’s campaign presently has $8.3 million budgeted for his campaign in Florida; $5.3 million in Michigan; $4.9 million in North Carolina; and $7.1 million in Pennsylvania.
Trump won Florida with support from 48.6 percent of voters next to 47.4 percent for Hillary Clinton in 2016, but polls have shown the race in the state virtually tied this year, with Democrats giving it an outsized focus. President Barack Obama held a drive-in rally for Democrats in Orlando on Tuesday, while Biden is set to present his closing case to voters in Tampa on Thursday.
Republicans have the spent the final days of the campaign focusing on the Midwest, especially Pennsylvania, which is effectively a must-win for this year’s presidential candidates. The Trump campaign said Monday it was moving a senior adviser, Bob Paduchik, from Ohio to Pennsylvania because of its confidence in Republicans’ ability to win the latter state.
