Joe Biden steps up attacks on Donald Trump in $50mn ad blitz

Good morning and welcome to US Election Countdown. Today we’re chatting about:

• Biden’s new ad blitz

• The battle for Wisconsin

• Protecting prices at the pump

Joe Biden’s campaign is growing bolder with its attacks on Donald Trump — and is paying a pretty penny for it.

The president is taking aim at his predecessor’s character with a $50mn advertising blitz that portrays Trump as an “unhinged” felon set on retribution [free to read].

The advert hit the airwaves just over a week before the first presidential debate, which will take place in Atlanta, the capital of Georgia — one of the most critical swing states up for grabs.

The TV spots, which paint Trump as a “spiralling and unhinged man who will do anything for power, revenge and retribution”, according to the Biden campaign, will target voters in battleground states. The $50mn also includes what the campaign said was its largest investment yet to reach Black, Latino, Asian American and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander voters.

The new attack ad comes after the president raised $28mn at a star-studded fundraiser in Los Angeles that featured former president Barack Obama and actors Julia Roberts and George Clooney.

The Hollywood event haul was the biggest in the history of the Democratic party, surpassing the bumper $26mn raised from a March fundraiser in New York.

The entertainment enclave is still a hotbed of Democratic support in contrast to the political shift rightward in Silicon Valley, where Trump raised $12mn from venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. Trump has been hitting up megadonors from Wall Street to the oilfields of Texas as he tries to close the cash gap with Biden.

The former president leads Biden by 1.1 points nationally, according to a polling average from Fivethirtyeight.com, with an edge in the swing states.

Campaign clips: the latest election headlines

• Biden is set to announce a path to citizenship for half a million undocumented spouses of US citizens.

• The president came into office threatening to make Saudi Arabia a pariah state, but the kingdom has won him over; Washington and Riyadh are closer than ever. [Free to read]

• There’s a battle over who polices online misinformation this election year, as libertarians allege collusion between academia, Big Tech and the government.

• The cryptocurrency industry has had a political awakening — and it has a huge pile of cash it could deploy before November. (NYT)

• Trump is expected to announce his vice-president next month — here are the pros and cons of the eight people on his shortlist. (Politico)

Behind the scenes

Trump will campaign in Wisconsin today, as he and Biden vie for the Midwest swing state’s coveted voters.

Wisconsin has a significant population of older, white and blue-collar workers whose party allegiances tend to waver. Trump will be trying to bolster his support in rural areas and peel away from Biden’s lower-income and minority voters in cities.

Who wins the state will depend on whether Biden can both keep his vote tally in Democratic strongholds such as Milwaukee and Madison and gain backers in the cities’ traditionally conservative college-educated Republican suburbs.

The FT’s James Politi recently took a trip to Sauk County, a political bellwether, and one of two counties in the state that flip-flopped between parties in recent years. Trump won it by just 109 votes in 2016, and Biden turned it back blue with a margin of 614 votes in 2020.

“I consider myself an independent but the Republican party has gone way to the right, and I can’t stand Trump,” retired accountant Steve Novak, told James. But Novak isn’t sure that Biden will win Wisconsin.

Of the people I know, it’s about 50-50 . . . I really think the economy is starting to turn. And I don’t think Biden gets enough credit for it. But it’s going to be a hard sell because a lot of people go to the grocery store and just think it’s not working.

Datapoints

Biden is prepared to use oil from the US strategic reserve to protect prices at the pump ahead of the election.

A rise in petrol prices is a sure-fire way to lose voter support, and Biden is keenly aware of this as he struggles to convince the electorate that he’s a better steward of the economy than Trump.

Amos Hochstein, Biden’s closest energy adviser, told the FT’s Myles McCormick and Jamie Smyth that prices were “still too high for many Americans” and he would like to see them “cut down a little bit further”.

“I think that we have enough in the SPR if it’s necessary,” he said, referring to the country’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, adding that the administration would do everything it could to “ensure as low [a] price as possible for American consumers”, said Hochstein.

US petrol prices averaged $3.45 a gallon on Sunday, according to the AAA motoring group, down slightly from a year ago but still more than 50 per cent higher than when Biden entered office in 2021.

Tapping the SPR — which Biden has done more than any of his predecessors — would infuriate Republicans, who have said he’s abused the stockpile for political gain.

Trump has claimed that the president’s climate-focused policies have choked the country’s oil production, though output has hit record highs under the current administration.

Viewpoints

• Rana Foroohar asks why business is so sanguine about Trump — and notes the utter lack of imagination about political risk regarding his possible return to the Oval Office. [Available for Premium subscribers]

• From France to the US, the far right is on the march as the “traditional right” melts down, writes Gideon Rachman.

• Rebecca Traister wonders if Republican women are OK as she explores the contradictory demands of being a woman in Donald Trump’s party. (New York Magazine)

• After sharp market reactions following elections in India, Mexico and South Africa, Ruchir Sharma explains why markets like to see new political faces.

• Janan Ganesh thinks we shouldn’t blame neoliberalism for the rise of the hard right.