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    Inside a Trump Ad Hammering Harris Over Americans’ Economic Woes

    Former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign began running this 30-second ad linking Vice President Kamala Harris to President Biden and the administration’s economic record on television stations in at least five key battleground states last week. The campaign has spent $2.8 million on those commercials, according to AdImpact.On the ScreenThe ad begins with a blurry image of a laughing Ms. Harris standing behind Mr. Biden on a stage, reaching out and grabbing his shoulder — physically linking them — as the words “Bidenomics is a FAILURE” blare across the screen.More bleak headlines follow: “Bidenomics FAILED.” “Bidenomics is a RECORD FAILURE.” “Americans’ incomes down THREE STRAIGHT YEARS.” “Unemployment RISING.” “America may soon be in a RECESSION.”The ad shows scenes intended to evoke Americans struggling as they go about their lives: a man putting gas in his pickup truck, a family standing morosely in front of a house with a for-sale sign, construction workers in hard hats, a man looking somberly out a window scratching his head. Another headline warns, “Bidenomics hits families with $5,600 pay cut,” before grainy video shows Ms. Harris happily declaring, “We are very proud of Bidenomics.”The ad ends with a close-up of Ms. Harris laughing, followed by a photo of Mr. Trump pumping his fist in front of an American flag and the words “Americans trust Trump on the economy.”The ScriptNarrator: “Their Bidenomics led to the highest inflation in 40 years. Highest gas prices ever. Skyrocketing interest rates. Unaffordable housing. Incomes down. Unemployment rising. And a recession now headed our way. Yet Kamala Harris is clueless.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    El incidente de Trump en Arlington es inédito

    Donald Trump no es el primer candidato que infringe la prohibición de actividades partidistas en el Cementerio Nacional de Arlington. Pero nadie ha respondido tan hostilmente como su campaña.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]En noviembre de 1999, el senador John McCain, republicano por Arizona y ex prisionero de guerra en Vietnam, quien era ampliamente considerado un héroe militar, dijo que su recién lanzada campaña presidencial había cometido “un error muy grave”.McCain, que en aquel momento iba muy por detrás de George W. Bush en la carrera por la nominación de su partido, había producido un anuncio de campaña en el que destacaba su carrera como piloto de la Marina y su reverencia por sus compañeros de servicio. En un momento dado, el anuncio mostraba a McCain caminando solemnemente por el Cementerio Nacional de Arlington.El Ejército no tardó en decir que la campaña de McCain nunca había solicitado permiso para filmar en el cementerio. Incluso si lo hubiera hecho, dijo entonces un portavoz del Ejército, la solicitud habría sido denegada porque las actividades partidistas están prohibidas en las instalaciones del Ejército. Un portavoz de la campaña dijo que el video procedía de una de las visitas periódicas del senador a las tumbas de su padre y su abuelo.Fue un incidente político de campaña que se pareció bastante, antes de divergir bruscamente, a otro que tuvo lugar la semana pasada. Un portavoz del Ejército dijo el jueves que la campaña del expresidente Donald Trump tampoco había recibido permiso para filmar en una zona restringida del Cementerio Nacional de Arlington durante la visita de Trump el lunes, y que no podía haberlo recibido porque violaría la ley federal.El Ejército emitió una rara reprimenda pública a los funcionarios de la campaña de Trump por los ataques que dirigieron a un trabajador del cementerio que había tratado de detener la filmación. (Un portavoz de la campaña había acusado al trabajador de sufrir un “episodio de salud mental”). La campaña de Trump había sido informada de que filmar con fines de campaña iba en contra de las normas del Ejército y, sin embargo, los funcionarios de la campaña siguieron adelante, incluso, según el Ejército, empujando físicamente al trabajador del cementerio.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Harris Campaign Reserves $370 Million for Swing-State Fall Ad Blitz

    $200 million of that will be spent to reach voters on their phones and other devices, as Kamala Harris’s aides race to define her while drawing a contrast with Donald Trump.Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign announced on Saturday that it was reserving $370 million in advertising to begin after Labor Day and run through the November election, including $200 million on digital ads.The Harris campaign said it believed this was the largest digital ad reservation ever in American politics, reflecting the need to reach voters on their phones and other devices. Just $170 million is being reserved so far on television, as traditional television audiences continue to fragment and shrink.“This is a modern campaign in 2024 and we’re not just stuck in the times of old, where 80 percent of the budget has to be on television,” Quentin Fulks, Ms. Harris’s principal deputy campaign manager, said in an interview.The Harris campaign did not say how much it would spend in each state. But it said its purchases of television advertising would total twice what President Biden’s 2020 campaign spent in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, four times what he spent in Georgia and six times what he spent in Nevada, the least populous of the battleground states.The Harris campaign is advertising now in seven swing states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — as part of a $150 million summer ad blitz. Mr. Fulks said advertising would continue in all of those states as well as nationally.For now, Mr. Fulks said the campaign was focused on “aggressively defining” Ms. Harris in her early weeks as a presidential candidate.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trump Erodes Biden’s Lead in 2024 Election Fundraising After Conviction

    Just two months ago, President Biden appeared to have a daunting financial advantage. Then Donald Trump was convicted of 34 felonies, and Republicans’ wallets opened.Former President Donald J. Trump out-raised President Biden for the second consecutive month in May, outpacing his successor by roughly $81 million in donations over the last two months as he rode a surge of financial support after his felony conviction.In May, Mr. Biden’s campaign and its joint operation with the Democratic National Committee raised $85 million, compared with $141 million for Mr. Trump and the Republican National Committee, according to the two campaigns. In April, the Trump team also brought in $25 million more than the Biden team.The Biden campaign said it entered June with $212 million on hand combined with the party. The Trump operation and R.N.C. have not released a full tally of their cash on hand since the end of March. A partial count on Thursday, revealed in Federal Election Commission filings, showed that Mr. Trump had amassed a war chest of at least $170 million with the party.Overall, Mr. Trump was a daunting $100 million behind Mr. Biden at the start of April. In two months, he cut that cash deficit by at least half.The full accounting of both sides’ finances will be made public in federal filings next month. But the combination of Mr. Trump’s improved fund-raising and Mr. Biden’s heavier spending on advertising this spring appears to put the two sides on a path to enter the summer relatively close to financial parity.“Yes, Trump is raising a lot more money now, and that should scare people,” said Brian Derrick, a strategist who founded a Democratic fund-raising platform called Oath. “But at the end of the day, Biden has the funds that he needs to run a really strong campaign.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Biden Addresses Inflation in New Ad

    Inflation is one of President Biden’s biggest weaknesses with voters heading into November, and former President Donald J. Trump has hammered him on the issue relentlessly.But Mr. Biden is trying to fight back: His campaign released a new advertisement on Thursday featuring him talking about his working-class roots and expressing sympathy for Americans struggling with high prices.The ad, produced in English and Spanish, is part of a seven-figure June media purchase targeted to Hispanic voters. It will run on television, radio and digital platforms across the battleground states, according to the Biden campaign, and is debuting on a day when Mr. Trump is set to speak in Washington to the Business Roundtable, a powerful lobbying group.Mr. Biden has built a sizable fund-raising advantage over Mr. Trump and has used his campaign war chest to dominate the airwaves. But the former president still leads in many polls, and he has made significant progress with Hispanic voters since his defeat in 2020. He is also making up ground in fund-raising.What the ad saysThe 30-second ad begins with a voice-over from Mr. Biden recounting his family leaving their hometown so his father could find work, paired with a black-and-white image of people carrying suitcases.“I know what it’s like to struggle,” the president says. “I know many American families are fighting every day to get by.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Robert De Niro Narrates an Anti-Trump Ad for Biden

    President Biden’s campaign released a new ad on Friday narrated by the actor Robert De Niro that seeks to remind voters of the chaos of Donald J. Trump’s presidency and warn them that a second Trump term would be even worse.The spot is part of the Biden’s campaign $14 million May advertising effort and will air on television and digital platforms in battleground states, as well as on national cable channels.Mr. De Niro openly opposed Mr. Trump’s presidency, calling him “baby-in-chief” at the National Board of Review awards gala in 2018 and using profanity to condemn him during the Tony Awards that year.What the ad saysIt opens with Mr. De Niro’s distinctive voice playing over images of Mr. Trump during the coronavirus pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.“From midnight tweets, to drinking bleach, to tear-gassing citizens and staging a photo op, we knew Trump was out of control when he was president,” Mr. De Niro says. “Then he lost the 2020 election — and snapped.” (The bleach reference was a nod to Mr. Trump’s suggestion that an “injection inside” the body with a disinfectant could help treat the coronavirus.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    R.F.K. Jr. Claims Censorship After Facebook and Instagram Briefly Block New Ad

    Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made censorship — specifically, claims that the government, news media and tech platforms have tried to stifle his message — a cornerstone of his independent presidential campaign.This weekend, Mr. Kennedy got more fodder for his argument when Facebook and Instagram blocked a link to a new, sleekly produced 30-minute ad supporting his candidacy. The link appeared to have been blocked from Friday late afternoon until Saturday around midday.Meta, which owns both platforms, called the episode a mistake. Andy Stone, a spokesman for Meta, said the link had been incorrectly flagged as spam. “It was mistakenly blocked, and it was corrected within a few hours” after the issue was discovered, Mr. Stone said.Tony Lyons, a founder of American Values 2024, the super PAC that paid for the ad, said that the group planned to sue Meta in federal court, accusing the company of censorship and of violating First Amendment rights to free speech.“When social media companies censor a presidential candidate, the public can’t learn what that candidate actually believes and what policies they would pursue if elected,” Mr. Lyons said. “We are left with the propaganda and lies from the most powerful and most corrupt groups and individuals.”The ad, which is narrated by the actor Woody Harrelson and takes the form of an infomercial, was produced by Jay Carson, an informal adviser to Mr. Kennedy who is also a Hollywood screenwriter and a former top aide to Hillary Clinton.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Talk of an Immigrant ‘Invasion’ Grows in Republican Ads and Speech

    Once relegated to the margins of the national debate, the word is now part of the party’s mainstream message on immigration.A campaign ad from a Republican congressional candidate from Indiana sums up the arrival of migrants at the border with one word. He doesn’t call it a problem or a crisis.He calls it an “invasion.”The word invasion also appears in ads for two Republicans competing for a Senate seat in Michigan. And it shows up in an ad for a Republican congresswoman seeking re-election in central New York, and in one for a Missouri lieutenant governor running for the state’s governorship. In West Virginia, ads for a Republican representative facing an uphill climb for the Senate say President Biden “created this invasion” of migrants.It was not so long ago that the term invasion had been mostly relegated to the margins of the national immigration debate. Many candidates and political figures tended to avoid the word, which echoed demagoguery in previous centuries targeting Asian, Latino and European immigrants. Few mainstream Republicans dared use it.But now, the word has become a staple of Republican immigration rhetoric. Use of the term in television campaign ads in the current election cycle has already eclipsed the total from the previous one, data show, and the word appears in speeches, TV interviews and even in legislation proposed in Congress.The resurgence of the term exemplifies the shift in Republican rhetoric in the era of former President Donald J. Trump and his right-wing supporters. Language once considered hostile has become common, sometimes precisely because it runs counter to politically correct sensibilities. Immigration has also become more divisive, with even Democratic mayors complaining about the number of migrants in their cities.Democrats and advocates for migrants denounce the word and its recent turn from being taboo. Historians and analysts who study political rhetoric have long warned that the term dehumanizes those to whom it refers and could stoke violence, noting that it appeared in writings by perpetrators of deadly mass shootings in Pittsburgh, Pa.; El Paso, Texas; and Buffalo, N.Y., in recent years.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More