Lincoln Project launches new ad hitting Trump over China policies

The Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump Republican super PAC, launched an ad Wednesday attacking President Trump over his policies dealing with China. 

The ad paints Trump as a “weak” and “corrupt” leader who would benefit China if he were reelected in November. 

“They can’t wait. They know who Donald Trump is: weak, corrupt, ridiculed,” the narrator of the ad says. “China beats him every time. No matter what he says, China’s got his number.” 

The ad also criticized Trump’s trade negotiations with China, which the president has championed as a win. The narrators said China “laughed as Trump hit American families with higher taxes” and hurt farms and small businesses. 

The narrator of the ad also said Trump “begged Chinese leader Xi to help him in the reelection, like a dog,” seemingly referencing allegations made by former White House national security adviser John Bolton in excerpts of his forthcoming book, which multiple media outlets published on Wednesday.

Bolton described an exchange that took place at the Group of 20 summit in June, where he said Trump solicited Chinese President Xi Jinping’s assistance in winning reelection. 

“Trump then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability and pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win,” Bolton writes. “He stressed the importance of farmers and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome. I would print Trump’s exact words, but the government’s prepublication review process has decided otherwise.”

Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh derided Bolton as a “disgruntled former employee” during an interview with Bloomberg TV shortly after the excerpt was published. 

“It’s an absurd allegation,” Murtaugh said of the claim that Trump solicited Xi’s help in winning reelection.

Trump himself also sharply criticized Bolton as “washed up” during an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity.

“He broke the law,” Trump said of Bolton when asked about the revelations from the memoir, referring to the lawsuit filed by the Justice Department challenging the publication of Bolton’s book. “He was a washed-up guy. I gave him a chance. He couldn’t get Senate-confirmed so I gave him a non-Senate-confirmed position where I could just put him there, see how he worked,”

The Hill reached out to the Trump campaign for comment in response to the Lincoln Project ad, which will air in Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona and Washington, D.C., according to CNN. 

Trump has previously criticized the members of the group, including its co-founder George Conway, a D.C.-based attorney married to White House counselor Kellyanne Conway. After Trump’s public criticism, the group said it saw its largest single-day fundraising haul.