Why Obama called out Pro-Trump group over an ad attacking Biden before the SC primary
An ad from a pro-Trump super PAC uses misleading audio from former President Barack Obama to attack Joe Biden, an Obama spokeswoman said.
A group called the Committee to Defend the President used clips from the audio version of Obama’s book “Dreams from My Father” to make it sound like he is criticizing the former vice president’s record on race, CBS News reports.
The advertisement is running on television stations in South Carolina ahead of the state’s primary on Saturday, CBS reports.
“This despicable ad is straight out of the Republican disinformation playbook, and it’s clearly designed to suppress turnout among minority voters in South Carolina by taking President Obama’s voice out of context and twisting his words to mislead viewers,” Obama spokeswoman Katie Hill said in a statement Wednesday, according to Politico.
Lawyers for the former president are preparing letters for South Carolina television stations demanding that the ads be pulled, Politico reports.
“In the interest of truth in advertising, we are calling on TV stations to take this ad down and stop playing into the hands of bad actors who seek to sow division and confusion among the electorate,” Hill said, according to Politico.
The ad begins: “Joe Biden promised to help our community. It was a lie. Here’s President Obama.” It then uses clips from Obama reading his 1995 memoir out of context to attack Biden on race.
“Plantation politics. Black people in the worst jobs. The worst housing. Police brutality rampant. But when the so-called black committeemen came around election time, we’d all line up and vote the straight Democratic ticket. Sell our souls for a Christmas turkey,” the clips from Obama say.
Obama was actually writing about his time as a community organizer in Chicago and sharing a story from a barber about the history of race in that city, according to PolitiFact.
PolitiFact said the group Committee to Defend the President used the same audio for a Facebook ad last year.
This story was originally published February 27, 2020 at 8:38 AM with the headline "Why Obama called out Pro-Trump group over an ad attacking Biden before the SC primary."
