July 24, 2020

The Trump Files: Donald and the Great Geico Boycott

“Something has to be done about this terrible, terrible Geico ad.”

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This post was originally published as part of “The Trump Files”—a collection of telling episodes, strange but true stories, and curious scenes from the life of our current President—on June 16, 2016.

The Donald knows a bad commercial when he sees one, and he won’t hesitate to strike back against them.

“Something has to be done about this terrible, terrible Geico ad,” he demanded in the March 21, 2011, edition of his “From The Desk of Donald Trump” YouTube series. At the time, Geico was running ads that featured basically nothing but a gravelly-voiced man in a suit asking rhetorical questions. (Look, they were weird. Just watch them yourselves.) Trump was incensed by the ads.

“It’s the worst I’ve ever seen on television,” he complained. “They’ve got this third-rate guy acting like he’s Humphrey Bogart, he’s driving people crazy…It’s a horrible commercial, it bothers everybody.”

But, as always, Trump had a plan to solve this. “We ought to boycott Geico,” he told his internet fans. “This is not Humphrey Bogart. If it were, Humphrey Bogart would not be a very famous guy.”

Read the rest of The Trump Files:

 

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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