O’Rourke rips new Trump ad going after Biden: ‘A disgrace’

Beto O’Rourke came to the defense of fellow Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden on Friday, blasting the Trump campaign’s new TV ad accusing the former vice president of misconduct over his dealings with Ukraine.

“Trump’s ad about Joe Biden is a disgrace,” the former Texas congressman and 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful tweeted. “Every one of us needs to call this exactly what it is: propaganda. Doing anything less is playing right into his hands.”

Trump’s ad about Joe Biden is a disgrace. Every one of us needs to call this exactly what it is: propaganda. Doing anything less is playing right into his hands.

— Beto O’Rourke (@BetoORourke) September 27, 2019

President Trump’s reelection campaign launched the new TV and digital ad against Biden earlier Friday in an effort to go on the offensive against the Democratic presidential frontrunner as Trump faces mounting scrutiny over his own contacts with Ukraine.{mosads}

The advertisement focuses on Biden’s efforts as vice president to have Ukraine dismiss a top prosecutor in 2016. At the time, the prosecutor was investigating a natural gas company on whose board his son, Hunter Biden, sat.

“Joe Biden promised Ukraine $1 billion if they fired the prosecutor investigating his son’s company,” a narrator says in the ad. “But when President Trump asks Ukraine to investigate corruption, the Democrats want to impeach him.”

No evidence has emerged to suggest the former vice president was acting with his son’s interests in mind, and Joe Biden has said he pushed for the prosecutor’s firing over what he says were insufficient efforts to tackle corruption in Ukraine.

The ad also comes as Republicans play defense after Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Tuesday announced that the House would launch a formal impeachment inquiry amid reports that Trump urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to probe Biden.

O’Rourke has been polling in the single digits in national surveys of the crowded Democratic primary race, well behind Biden and several other leading contenders.