George Conway group lines up body bags in ad hitting Trump on coronavirus deaths

The Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump conservative super PAC run in part by George Conway, released a new ad on Tuesday hitting President Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic as the U.S. approaches 100,000 deaths from the virus.

The 24-second ad depicts rows of red, white and blue body bags arranged to display the American flag.

The audio includes Trump’s remarks during a press briefing in late February, when he claimed the country had been doing a “great job” stemming the spread of the virus.

“When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done,” Trump said. 

The ad then displays the message: “100,000 dead Americans. One wrong president.”

The Hill has reached out to the White House and the Trump campaign for comment on the new ad.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters on Tuesday that “every loss of life counts” when asked about the 100,000-death milestone.

“We say 100,000, but like the president says, you know, one death is something to be mourned. These 100,000 individuals have a face. The president takes this very seriously. It’s why he lowered the flag to half-staff for three days, to remember these men and women,” she said.

“I think, you know, Dr. Birx said it best when she said that in their estimates they had anywhere between 1.5 [million] and 2.2 million people in the U.S. succumbing to the virus if we didn’t shut down the economy. The president made the very hard choice of shutting down the economy, so we avoided that extraordinary number,” she said, referring to White House coronavirus task force coordinator Deborah Birx.

“To be under, significantly, that high mark shows that the president did everything in his power and helped to make this number as low as humanly possible,” McEnany added.

The U.S. is set to hit the somber milestone of 100,000 coronavirus deaths soon, according to a database from Johns Hopkins University.

The Lincoln Project, made up of prominent conservatives, has frequently knocked the Trump administration’s response to the outbreak.

The GOP group released an ad earlier this month, called “Mourning in America,” that was critical of the recently passed CARES Act and its Paycheck Protection Program, which provides loans to small businesses during the coronavirus pandemic.

Facebook slapped a warning label on the ad after PolitiFact rated the content “false.”

Trump has since torn into the group, dismissing its leaders, such as Conway, a Washington, D.C., attorney who is married to Trump White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, as “losers.”

“I don’t know what Kellyanne did to her deranged loser of a husband, Moonface, but it must have been really bad,” Trump tweeted.