http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/271928-decorated-veterans-star-in-tough-new-anti-trump-adsBy Jonathan Swan - 03/05/16 03:33 PM EST
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp5NKcZ87GgDecorated veterans are going after Donald Trump’s character in hard-hitting new Florida ads designed to drive down the Republican front-runner’s popularity to stop him winning the crucial winner-take-all state on March 15.
In new attack ads, released by conservative non-profit American Future Fund within a multimillion-dollar rotation, two veterans, Afghanistan Special Forces Commander Lt. Col. Michael Waltz and retired Vietnam pilot and prisoner-of-war Lt. Col. Tom Hanton, hit Trump for dodging the draft in Vietnam, “serving only himself” and for criticizing Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for being captured during the Vietnam War.
“We are changing traffic in the Florida Panhandle to these ads. We will be adding new money there on Monday as well,” said American Future Fund’s spokesman Stuart Roy in an email to The Hill on Saturday.
“The Panhandle is full of active and retired military. Think Eglin Air Force Base, Pensacola Naval Air Station, Hulburt Field, Naval Support Activity Panama City, and Tyndall Air Force Base.”
“Donald Trump hasn’t served this country a day in his life, essentially dodged the draft in Vietnam through multiple deferments,” Waltz says, speaking directly into the camera. “All Donald Trump has served is himself. Don’t let Donald Trump fool you. Look into his real record and stop Trump now.
Waltz said he is sickened by Trump’s comments disparaging Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) status as a war hero because he was captured.
“I like people who weren’t captured,” Trump said in July.
Hanton accuses Trump of calling veterans losers, though Trump didn’t specifically do that. Instead, he called McCain a loser for coming up short in the 2008 presidential election to Barrack Obama.
“I supported McCain for president. He lost and let us down,” Trump told the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, last year. I’ve never liked him as much after that.
“I don’t like losers,” he said.
Trump currently leads Florida Sen. Marco Rubio by nearly 19 percentage points in Rubio’s home state, according to the latest RealClearPolitics average. But American Future Fund is part of a growing campaign against Trump from the Republican donor class, which is frantically trying to stop the billionaire from locking up the party’s nomination. Destroying Trump in Florida is now at the center of these groups' strategies.
The billionaire Ricketts family, which owns the Chicago Cubs baseball team, is involved in one of the anti-Trump groups, Our Principles PAC, and tens of millions are now pouring into Marco Rubio’s super-PAC Conservative Solutions PAC, much of it coming from Wall Street and a good deal of it earmarked to oppose Trump.
American Future Fund, as a “social welfare” non-profit organized under section 501(c)4 of the tax code, is allowed to hide its donors’ identities, so it is unclear who are the main funders of its anti-Trump campaign. AFF has previously been funded by groups affiliated with the Koch brothers' donor network, but the Koch groups are understood to have pulled back on their investment in recent years.
Asked how much money AFF was going to add to the $1.75 million it has already committed to attacking Trump in Florida, Roy said in an email, “Not sure of the dollar amount we are adding on Monday as we are literally getting money coming in as we speak.
“It’s a moving target but in a good way."
Before these new veterans ads launched, AFF had been focused on portraying Trump as a business fraud due to his Trump University real estate investment school that is the subject of a lawsuit launched by former students who claim they were conned.
Said Roy of the group’s new veterans-focused ads: “It’s unthinkable we could have as Commander-in-Chief someone who avoided the draft and then insulted our bravest American heroes ... for having been captured in the line of duty.
“The more people know about Donald Trump, the more they understand that honor and Trump are not synonyms."
The Trump campaign has been contacted for comment on this report.
- Alexander Bolton contributed
