Biden campaign drops new digital ad hitting Trump over slow coronavirus response

Joe Biden’s presidential campaign is out with a new digital ad accusing President Trump of worsening the public health crisis and economic turmoil stemming from the coronavirus pandemic by failing to take quick action on the outbreak months ago.

“Donald Trump doesn’t understand. We have an economic crisis because we have a public health crisis. And we have a public health crisis because he refused to act,” a narrator says in the nearly three-minute-long spot. “Donald Trump didn’t build a great economy. His failure to lead destroyed one.”

The ad is set to run on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube on Monday in six battleground states: Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to the former vice president’s campaign. 

The latest digital spot and a previous one released last month mark the start of the Biden campaign’s early paid media investments in a handful of battleground states. The campaign is set to ramp up its spending in those states in the coming months. 

The digital spot also comes days after Unite the Country, the main super PAC supporting Biden’s presidential bid, announced that it would spend $10 million on advertising and other programming to boost Biden ahead of the Democratic National Convention in April. 

Trump’s campaign is also spending heavily on advertising. It unveiled a $10 million campaign last week aimed at attacking Biden. One spot released last week seeks to tie the former vice president to China and accuses him of taking too soft an approach to his dealings with the economic powerhouse.