WASHINGTON (Reuters) – More than 99% of U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s television ads have focused on impeachment this year, according to an analysis that shows how central the topic has become for his re-election campaign. <\/p>\n
The anti-impeachment blitz has cost the Trump campaign over $4.4 million for more than 4,500 television ad airings through Dec. 14, the Wesleyan Media Project, a nonpartisan group that tracks political advertising, said in a report on Thursday. <\/p>\n
All of the ads mentioning impeachment have come since Oct. 1. <\/p>\n
The House of Representatives impeached Trump on Wednesday on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress – a historic vote that makes Trump only the third U.S. president to face a Senate trial to remove him from office. <\/p>\n
The Republican-controlled Senate is expected to acquit the president. But Trump, who denies any wrongdoing, has seized on the topic as a rallying cry for his supporters, which Republicans hope will help him win re-election in November 2020 presidential contest. <\/p>\n
Before Trump\u2019s anti-impeachment blitz began in October, the president had only aired 36 television ads in 2019, with none mentioning impeachment, the Wesleyan Media Group said. <\/p>\n
In addition to Trump\u2019s ads, Republican groups are funding ads attacking Democratic members of the House over their support for the impeachment investigation. <\/p>\n
The conservative American Action Network, for example, has spent more than $2.3 million this year on television ads that mentioned impeachment and a House candidate up for re-election in 2020. <\/p>\n
\u201cRepublicans are going on offense when it comes to the issue of impeachment,\u201d said Travis Ridout, co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project. <\/p>\n
Ads by Democrats have been mostly silent on the issue, Ridout said. Almost all Democratic ads mentioning impeachment have come from billionaire businessman Tom Steyer, a presidential candidate who has made impeachment a core issue of his campaign, but whose candidacy has garnered little support in public opinion polls. <\/p>\n
Reporting by Jason Lange; Editing by Bill Berkrot<\/p>\n
Article source: http:\/\/feeds.reuters.com\/~r\/Reuters\/PoliticsNews\/~3\/xbUvirEw1cw\/almost-all-of-trumps-tv-campaign-ads-discuss-impeachment-report-idUSKBN1YN2AR<\/a>\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – More than 99% of U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s television ads have focused on impeachment this year, according to an analysis that shows how central the topic has become for his re-election campaign. The anti-impeachment blitz has cost the Trump campaign over $4.4 million for more than 4,500 television ad airings through Dec. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-199646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","tag-political"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199646\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}