Democrats are running print ads reminding voters of former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election around his campaign events in Iowa Saturday.
The Democratic National Committee advertisements, provided first to NBC News, consists of full-page ads in local papers serving the two cities Trump plans to visit on the anniversary of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol: Newton and Clinton, Iowa.
The ads will appear Saturday in the Northwest Iowa Review, the Clinton Herald, the Newton Daily News and The Globe Gazette, and they contain the message, “Three years ago, Donald Trump attacked our Democracy. Given the chance, he’d do it again. Don’t let him.”
The framing of Trump in the advertisements as a threat to democracy is in-line with the way President Joe Biden has sought to frame the upcoming general election, with Biden delivering a speech in Pennsylvania Friday against his likely opponent.
“Donald Trump’s campaign is obsessed with the past, not the future. He’s willing to sacrifice our democracy. Put himself in power. Our campaign is different. For me and Kamala, our campaign is about America,” Biden said during remarks in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
Democrats are aiming to tap into an issue that’s proven salient in recent polling as well as the 2022 midterms: protecting democracy.
“It’s been three years since Trump orchestrated a violent attack on our democracy, but every day the memory becomes more vivid for voters as he escalates his threats by praising dictators — and promising to become one himself,” said DNC national press secretary Sarafina Chitika.
Trump allies have sought to downplay the significance of the anniversary as they’ve barnstormed Iowa on behalf of the former president this week. The event comes up relatively rarely on the GOP presidential trail.
“People don’t care,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said on Thursday in Keokuk, Iowa. “Everyone’s over it.”
