It’s been three months since Donald Trump finished the GOP primary to officially become the candidate tagged to challenge Democrat Hillary Clinton for president. Since then, Trump hasn’t spent a dime on campaign ads in key swing states against Clinton. Guy described the problem yesterday.
Trump’s camp released a tape of the email scandal in early July, but it never actually aired anywhere—nor did his campaign pay for any campaign ads. Zero. They’re still keeping him off the air. It’s mid-August, he’s clearly losing, and his camp is still considering airtime for the fall.
Until now. Finally something is changing.
Trump’s campaign has I just dropped it $60 million for a series of ads that will air in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Nevada and North Carolina starting this week.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump will begin airing his first television ads ahead of the general election in the coming days, the campaign confirmed to NPR.
The ads will air in Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Nevada and North Carolina — all key battleground states where Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton has led or widened her lead in recent polls. It was not immediately clear how much the Trump campaign would spend on the initial ad buy.
Trump insists he does not need to run conventional television ads given the attention he gains from free media coverage and social media reach.
“I don’t even know why I need all this money,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Maine in June. “I go around, I give speeches, I talk to reporters. I don’t even need ads, if you want to know the truth.”
The ad buy announcement came just hours before the Trump campaign announced the hiring of a recent campaign manager, longtime pollster and GOP activist Kellyanne Conway. Conway is the third campaign manager since May.
