Vietnam Vet Slams Trump in New Super-PAC Ad

“He’s not fit to be president.”

Priorities USA Action ad called "Sacrifice"

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The pro-Hillary Clinton super-PAC Priorities USA Action released an ad Monday hitting Donald Trump for comparing his sacrifices to those of Gold Star parents Khizr and Ghazala Khan, who lost their son in the Iraq War. The new ad features a Vietnam veteran who charges that Trump’s comments make him unfit to be president.

Trump’s claim to have sacrificed greatly in his life came this summer as part of his response to Khizr Khan, a Muslim American whose son died in Iraq in 2004. Khan’s speech at the Democratic National Convention in July included the powerful line: “You have sacrificed nothing and no one.” Shortly afterward, Trump gave an interview to ABC News in which he claimed he had also made sacrifices in his life. Pressed on what they were, he said, “I think I’ve made a lot of sacrifices. I work very, very hard. I’ve created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, built great structures. I’ve had tremendous success. I think I’ve done a lot.”

In the new ad, Russell Wiesley, a former Marine, responds to these comments. “For Donald Trump to compare getting rich to the hell we went through,” he says, “he’s not fit to be president.” As he speaks, the camera pans down to show that Wiesley lost one of his legs in Vietnam.

The ad appears to be part of an effort by Clinton and her allies to remind voters of Trump’s feud with the Khan family, one of the most damaging episodes in his tumultuous presidential campaign, in the weeks before the election. Last week, the Clinton campaign released an ad featuring a tearful Khan asking Trump, “Would my son have a place in your America?”

The new ad is part of a multimillion-dollar ad buy and will run in Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida, Nevada, Iowa, and New Hampshire—the same states where the Clinton campaign is running its ad featuring Khan.

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At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

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So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

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