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 says
It 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.)
The actor accuses Mr. Trump of “desperately trying to hold onto power,” threatening to rule as a “dictator” if he wins the 2024 election and wanting to “terminate the Constitution.”
Then the ad shows a video of Mr. Trump speaking at a campaign rally.
“If I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a blood bath,” the former president says.
What the ad is trying to do
The Biden campaign believes that voters are still waking up to the fact that the November election will be between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump, two historically unpopular candidates.
On June 27, Americans are set to face their first big reminder when Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump debate in Atlanta. The new ad is the first step in a monthlong effort by the Biden campaign to set the narrative of that debate, making the election a referendum on Mr. Trump’s four years in office as much as on Mr. Biden’s.
Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, Mr. Biden’s campaign chair, said in a memo accompanying the De Niro ad that the Biden team would seek to define Mr. Trump as dangerous and unhinged.
“We will make sure that the voters who will decide this election are reminded of the chaos and harm Trump caused as president — and why they booted him out four years ago,” Ms. O’Malley Dillon wrote, adding that the choice between the two candidates was “continuing to crystallize for voters.”
She said the campaign would focus on three key issues before the debate: abortion, democracy and economic fairness. And she noted that it would highlight the anniversaries of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade on June 24 and the deadly shooting at the gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando, which took place on June 12, 2016.
Ms. O’Malley Dillon also tried to needle Mr. Trump, suggesting he might not even show up to the debate.