One of the largest outside groups supporting President Trump’s reelection campaign will release new ads this week attacking Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the top progressive candidates running for the Democratic presidential nomination.
The Great America PAC, which has raised and spent more than $35 million in support of Trump over the past three years, is putting $250,000 behind the two national cable news ads.
The first ad, which will also be pushed digitally in Iowa and New Hampshire, attacks Warren over the controversy surrounding her past claims of Native American heritage.
A top strategist from the group said it’s running the attack ad against Warren now because it would rather face Sanders in the general election, believing that Trump would have an easier time defeating him.
The ad comes as Sanders appears to be pulling support from Warren, who has fallen into fourth place in some recent surveys of Iowa and New Hampshire. Sanders and Warren are battling to be the party’s progressive standard bearer.
“We don’t think Warren is viable but she can still spoil it for Bernie,” said Eric Beach, a strategist for the Great America PAC. “We want to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
The ad features Native Americans sharply criticizing Warren for having claimed their heritage.
“It’s insulting,” a Native American woman says in the ad.
“We all make mistakes, but living a lie for 69 year to get ahead of honest, hardworking people? That’s simply unforgivable,” says a Native American man.
Warren initially addressed the controversy by releasing a DNA test demonstrating she was between 1/64 and 1/1028 Native American, but she later apologized and acknowledged the DNA test was a mistake.
The Great America PAC will also release a second ad warning that Sanders’s polices will bankrupt the country, effectively daring Democrats to nominate him for president.
The ad features Sanders running through his list of campaign promises, as title cards on the screen read off the economic cost of each program.
“We will take on the greed of the insurance companies and the drug companies and pass a Medicare for all single payer program,” Sanders says, as the screen reads “$3.2 trillion a year.”
The ad closes by saying: “Are the Democrats ready for Bernie? We sure hope so.”
There is fierce debate among Democrats about who the most electable candidate is.
Former Vice President Joe Biden has made electability a core argument for his campaign.
However, polls show Sanders performing about as well as Biden in a head-to-head matchup against Trump. A survey released on Thursday found Sanders running strongest against Trump in Texas.
Still, some mainstream Democrats are warning that the party will face heavy losses in November if it nominates a candidate who is too far to the left.
The question has split Trump World insiders, as some believe the president would easily dispatch of Sanders, while others worry that his populist message is in step with the times and that he’d upend the electoral map.
“The idea that Bernie seems to be able to win the first two states means that the Democratic Party is in disarray and we plan to take full advantage,” Beach said.
“It is laughable that a 78-year-old Caucasian socialist is the head of the quote-unquote diverse Democratic Party, but we think he’ll be the nominee and we look forward to facing off against him in the general election,” he added.