Our Principles PAC, a newly-minted political action committee aimed at stopping Donald Trump, released a new web-based ad Wednesday that says Trump is “unelectable” given his hesitation in condemning an apparent endorsement from a former member of the Ku Klux Klan.
The 90-second ad, titled “Unelectable,” is out just hours after Trump swept seven of the Super Tuesday nominating contests. With 316 total Republican delegates run so far, Trump has cemented his status as the candidate to beat in the GOP race.
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Trump was criticized repeatedly by several high-profile Republicans in the hours leading up to Super Tuesday for claiming, during an interview with CNN, he knew “nothing about [former KKK Grand Wizard] David Duke [or] white supremacists.” Our Principles PAC included several reactions to that comment in its newest digital ad. The ad also highlights several interviews over the years where different figures in the media have called the New York billionaire “racist.”
“That’s disqualifying right there. It’s breathtaking,” MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, who’s been accused of cozying up to Trump, says of Trump’s comments about the KKK in one soundbite included in the ad.
“I flat out called him a racist,” former late-night host David Letterman says of Trump in another clip.
The video also points out Trump’s tendency to call African-American voters “the blacks,” and suggests his advocacy of the death penalty against five young black men in New York’s “Central Park Jogger” case in 1989 was racially charged.
“He does not have a great relationship with ‘the blacks,'” talk radio host Karen Hunter says in one soundbite. “You can ask five kids from New York City during the Central Park jogger rapist trial when Donald Trump took out a full-page ad calling for the death penalty.”
“He wanted to kill these kids and it turned out they were innocent,” Hunter adds. The five men previously convicted in the case later had their convictions overturned and were awarded a $41 million settlement from the city of New York by a federal judge n June 2014. Trump called the settlement “a disgrace.”
The ad comes just 24 hours after major GOP donors Meg Whitman, Paul Singer and Tom Ricketts encouraged 50 like-minded conservatives to contribute to the anti-Trump super PAC.
Our Principles PAC, which has also launched a post-Super Tuesday, seven-figure TV ad buy against Trump, is led by former Mitt Romney staffer Katie Packer. The group’s newest TV ads will air mostly in Illinois, Michigan and Florida and highlight the allegations of fraud against Trump University.