The Biden campaign launched a new ad Friday targeting voters who backed Nikki Haley in the Republican primary by reminding them of the times presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump called her “Bird Brain” — and including a call to “Save America” by backing the Democratic president.
The 30-second ad is part of a larger $30 million spring ad buy and will run in eight battleground states where Haley performed relatively well against Trump, the Biden campaign said.
The video includes clips of Trump remarking that he won’t need “too many” Haley supporters to win in November and Truth Social posts he made when Haley was still in the race saying her voters “will be permanently barred from the MAGA camp.”
“Save America. Join us,” the ad concludes.
Trump had adopted a conciliatory tone after Haley dropped out March 6, inviting her backers “to join the greatest movement in the history of our Nation.”
Haley stopped short of endorsing Trump after suspending her campaign, calling for him to “earn the votes” of her supporters.
“Donald Trump has made it crystal clear he doesn’t want support from voters who cast their ballot for Nikki Haley, so let us be equally clear: There is a home for everyone on this campaign who knows Donald Trump cannot be back in the White House,” said Biden-Harris 2024 communications director Michael Tyler.
“Joe Biden is building a broad and diverse coalition of voters who want more freedoms, not less, who want to protect our democracy, and who want to live in a country that is safe from the chaos, division, and violence that another Donald Trump presidency would bring.”
In response, the Trump campaign argued that most of Haley’s support came from “behavioral Democrats” who infiltrated the Republican nominating contests.
In New Hampshire, where Haley spent a large chunk of her resources and time in a bid to overtake Trump, 70% of her voters were registered as undeclared or independent, while 27% were registered Republicans, a CNN exit poll found.
In Haley’s home state of South Carolina, the former governor won the independent vote by 25% and defeated Trump by 49 percentage points (74%-25%) among those who identified as moderate or liberal, NBC News exit polling found.
After Haley dropped out, an Emerson College poll found that 63% of Haley primary voters said they would back Biden in a general election, while 27% said they would support Trump and 10% said they were undecided.
“No amount of gaslighting from the Biden campaign can make voters forget Biden’s Bloodbath he has brought all across America — from the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal costing American lives, record number of illegals crossing the border to kill Americans, making America less safe with a feckless foreign policy, and allowing rampant crime to explode in cities,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement.
Meanwhile, an RNC rep told reporters “the door is always open” to Haley supporters.
“The share … that are Republicans, we have no doubt that we’re going to get them back because they’re facing a choice between, you know, continue to slide downhill from an economic standpoint, from a security standpoint, from a border security standpoint, and more of the same, so an actual fundamental change,” the staffer added.
“So we’re not really worried about that. Our door’s always open. Always has been.”
