The Club for Growth aired a television commercial touting Vice President Mike Pence’s loyalty to President Trump, targeted at the West Palm Beach market where Trump spent the holidays.
Airing last week on the Fox News Channel, the ad, titled “Never,” sought to rebuke a Lincoln Project commercial suggesting Pence was “backing away” from Trump’s long-shot effort to overturn the election results.
Pence is “Trump’s trusted partner for the last four years, through thick and thin. He’s never stopped fighting for President Trump, and he’s not about to stop now,” reads a voice-over, then adds, “Mike Pence stays true.”
The $25,000 buy aired on Wednesday and Thursday last week while Trump was staying at his Palm Beach County resort, Mar-a-Lago. It aired 27 times, according to Ad Impact, a data firm. The president returned to Washington on Thursday, cutting his trip short without explanation.
“The ad was to set the record straight on the claims being made by the liberals at Lincoln Project” about the vice president, Joe Kildea, the Club for Growth’s vice president of communications, told the Washington Examiner.
David McIntosh, the group’s president and a close Pence ally, told Bloomberg, who first reported the commercial, that the vice president hoped to communicate that “he remained a good friend.”
McIntosh said he discussed the Lincoln Project ad with Pence while traveling with him to Georgia to campaign for the Republican candidates in the Senate runoff election.
Trump has chafed in recent weeks at aides he views as insufficiently loyal as he contests the results of the Nov. 3 general election, with the Lincoln Project ad a particular irritant, according to reports.
“This ad has clearly got inside Trump’s head,” one source who talked to Trump told Axios at the time.
On Saturday, Pence’s chief of staff said the vice president “welcomes the efforts” of Republicans who’ve said they will protest the Electoral College vote in Congress on Wednesday. Pence, in his role as president of the Senate, is expected to preside over the vote.
