
A New York Times opinion editor wrote Tuesday that while Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have run about the same number of ads in swing states, they’re “worlds apart” in tone — and any notion from Trump that the Harris campaign has been too negative is “laughable.”
Gus Wezerek published an analysis Tuesday after watching every presidential campaign ad that aired on broadcast stations from Aug. 1 to Oct. 25. After labeling them “positive,” “contrast” or “negative,” he found a “stark difference.
While Harris’ ads varied in tone, Trump’s ads, he found, were “mostly negative.”
“Republicans have been much more consistent in their messaging,” Wezerek said. “When Harris went high, they went low, over and over again.”
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The analysis comes after Trump told “Fox & Friends” earlier this month that he thinks networks shouldn’t be allowed to run “negative ads” about him until after the election.
“In the old days, you never played negative ads. In other words, when I leave here, I’ll then be hit by five or six ads, and in the old days…” he said.
Trump’s complaint about Harris’s “relatively few negative ads particularly laughable,” wrote Wezerek.
“If the network applied the same standards to Trump, his campaign wouldn’t have many ads left to run,” he concluded.