October 29, 2018

Donald Trump Is Completely Absent in His Official Closing Ad for the Midterms

The Trump campaign seems aware the president isn’t popular with a crucial demographic.

AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

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Donald Trump has spent the last two years making the Republican Party about himself—dominating the policy decisions, forcing GOP lawmakers to recast themselves in his image, and hoovering up tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions that otherwise might have ended up in congressional campaign coffers. But now, in his last-minute salvo before the election, there is mysteriously no Trump. 

Trump’s 2020 campaign, which has raised a whopping $60.6 million, is spending $6 million to plaster a lengthy, one-minute campaign ad across national airwaves and cable networks for the next seven days. And the ad, released Monday morning, targets a demographic that is Trump—and the Republican Party’s—greatest weakness: college-educated suburban women. But despite total Trump-centrism since the last election, this big final push by the Trump campaign has absolutely no mention of the president until a tiny credit at the end of the spot.

In the ad, a woman and her family move into a new house, and as she prepares her young daughter to attend violin lessons, she recalls news clips of how bad things were back during the Great Recession, juxtaposed with better media coverage of the economy today. Then, in a not-so subtle reminder that no one will know how you vote on Election Day, the woman pauses before leaning into the shadows of a voting booth and checks the box for a female Republican candidate. The ad then shows the woman and her husband proudly watching their daughter perform a violin concert in the future. The ad closes with the tagline: “Things are getting better. We can’t go back.”

There’s no Trump and none of his catchphrases. In fact, the closest the ad gets to a mention of Trump is a radio voice intoning, “Look we can’t get distracted from the biggest issue, which are jobs and our kids’ futures”—an obvious reference to Trump’s tendency of veering off message and into controversy.

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“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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