The Democratic National Committee is stepping up its attacks on former President Donald Trump, preparing to release a new political advertisement referring to him as a “convicted felon” after a Manhattan jury found him guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in his “hush money” trial last week.
CBS News has learned that a billboard near Trump’s scheduled campaign event in Phoenix, Arizona will announce the DNC’s plan on Thursday. Turning Point Action CEO Charlie Kirk will host a town hall-style conversation with Trump, marking his first formal campaign trip since the announcement.
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The billboard, which is in both English and Spanish, reads: “Trump has already attacked Arizona’s democracy once. Now he’s back as a convicted felon. He seeks revenge and payback. Trump: “Unfit to serve.”
This is the first time the DNC has used the term “convicted felon” in paid advertising since the Manhattan criminal trial.
“If Trump, a convicted felon, wins in November, he promises to be a dictator ‘on day one’ to carry out his revenge and retribution agenda, stoking political violence while attacking Arizonans’ reproductive and democratic rights,” said Abhi Rahman, the DNC’s deputy communications director.
Rahman was reacting to a statement Trump had made at a Fox News town hall in December.
The new campaign comes as President Biden, who mainly avoided commenting on the Manhattan criminal trial during its entirety, takes a more aggressive stance against Trump following the conviction.
Mr. Biden spoke at a fundraiser in Greenwich, Connecticut, on Monday about the conviction.
“For the first time in American history, a former president who is a convicted felon is now seeking the office of president,” Mr. Biden stated at fundraisers.
Trump supporters, including several prominent Republican congressmen, claim the trial was political in character.
“It was never about justice. “This is about plastering ‘convicted felon’ all over the airwaves,” Sen. JD Vance of Ohio told CNN after the judgment.
The Biden team anticipates a conviction will narrow Trump’s poll lead, but the impact of the verdict is still unknown.
After Trump’s conviction, a CBS News poll showed that most Americans’ opinions on the trial remained unchanged. The poll indicated that opinions about Trump’s guilt or innocence were similar to those held before the verdict. Nine out of ten respondents who thought Trump was guilty before hearing the verdict said the jury got it right, while those who thought he wasn’t guilty answered the opposite.
