New Biden ad slams Trump over Lafayette Square debacle

The Biden campaign has rolled out a searing new ad that takes aim at President Trump for using teargas and flash grenades on peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square, near the White House, earlier this month. "The nation marches for justice, and like a deer in the headlights, [Trump is] paralyzed with fear," the narrator intones over footage of the George Floyd demonstrators. "He doesn't know what to do, so he hides in his bunker. Then he's afraid he looks too weak, so he has tear gas and flash grenades used on peaceful protesters just for a photo-op."

Biden's team has clearly seen Trump's response to the coronavirus pandemic and the turmoil over Floyd's killing as an opening. The presumptive Democratic nominee escalated his Facebook spending this month, purchasing $5 million in advertising over a handful of days, nearly four times more than Trump. "It's great that the Biden campaign is seeing the activism that is going on in the streets and looking to capitalize on that online," Eric Ming, the former director of digital and paid media for Andrew Yang's presidential campaign, told The New York Times.

Trump is also using the unrest to try to set himself apart from Biden. Last weekend, "Trump retweeted a tweet of a state Senate candidate in Connecticut who showed photos of Trump walking through Lafayette Square, and another with Biden kneeling with the black pastors inside the church," The Washington Post reports. "'Leaders lead,' the caption read. 'Cowards kneel.'"

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