Trump Blasts Fox News For Supposedly Airing ‘Untruthful Anti-Trump Commercials’
(Tasos Katopodis, Getty Images)
Former President Donald Trump blasted Fox News on Sunday, claiming the network “continually allow[s] horrible and untruthful anti-Trump commercials to be run.”
“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.”
He went on to complain about the “forces” working against him.
“Ratings-challenged CNN and MSNBC would never run a positive Trump ad—never,” he said. “With so many forces against us, Big Tech, the Fake News Media, the Radical Left, the RINOs, and more, we are at such a disadvantage, but we will win anyway!”
In February, POLITICO reported that the anti-Trump Republican Accountability Project, would air ads on Fox News in favor of GOP lawmakers who impeached Trump and defeat his most loyal backers in office. Other anti-Trump groups have bought airtime on specific local Fox News markets with the stated purpose of provoking a reaction from the former president.
And MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell complained over the summer that Fox News would not air a commercial promoting his three-day “cyber symposium” about how the election was rigged (it was not). He temporarily suspended MyPillow advertising as a result, but as of late September, the pillow company’s ads are back on the network.
Mediaite was unable to determine what specific ad may have triggered Trump’s complaint, so it is not possible to ascertain how “untruthful” or “anti-Trump” the ad may have been.
UPDATE 8:35 pm ET: Lincoln Project founder Rick Wilson told Mediaite that he was not sure if the ad was from his group or not, but noted the anti-Trump PAC’s long-running strategy of targeting Trump with local cable ad buys and confirmed that they did have a current buy.
“We’re always running ads on Fox News in Bedminster and Mar-a-Lago area cable,” said Wilson, “because it’s a central part of our ‘audience of one’ strategy and as you can see, it’s highly effective. Now, I don’t know if he’s talking about one of our ads — other people have followed us into this strategy — but we’re the OGs of it.”
UPDATE 10:15 pm ET: The PAC MeidasTouch claimed responsibility for the ad that got under Trump’s skin, tweeting late Sunday that “we just broke Trump.” Their ad buy was done through a local cable provider and not via Fox News ad sales.
“We didn’t think we could break him any more than we already had,” MeidasTouch wrote. “But we did. After we put our ad on the air at Mar-A-Lago that is humiliating him for not coming to Virginia. He wants to come so badly.”
The group shared a video of the ad, in which Trump is mocked for not being part of the Virginia gubernatorial election.
“Donald why are you so scared to go to Virginia?” the ad says. “Is it because you know Glenn Youngkin wants nothing to do with you? Or is it because your loser stench rubs off on everyone you touch?”
“If you aren’t too weak or scared or washed up, you would get to Virginia fast,” the ad later notes, and calls him a “coward.”
Meidas co-founder Ben Meiselas said that the anti-Trump ads had been running in the Mar-a-Lago market for the last week.
UPDATE 11:30 am ET 10/25/2021: Meidas Touch responded to Mediaite’s request for comment, writing, “We already knew Trump was a pathetic loser, but hopefully his unhinged tirade at seeing our ad also showed voters in Virginia how heavily invested Trump is in destroying the state by having his proxy Youngkin elected.”
