Former President Donald Trump's new swing state attack ad against Vice President Kamala Harris is so full of exaggerations and falsehoods that it baffled a local authority and stunned a Washington Post fact checker.
Trump's recent pitch to Michigan autoworkers was described as "bombastic," "false" and "misleading" in a Washington Post analysis from Glenn Kessler Tuesday morning.
“There are so many misstatements in this ad," Bruce M. Belzowski, managing director of the Michigan research group Automotive Futures, told the Post, "it’s hard to know where to start."
Kessler begins with a quick quotation of Trump's message to autoworkers in a campaign ad released on Oct. 17.
“Kamala Harris supports [electric vehicle] mandates, killing Michigan jobs," the ad claims. "She wants to end all gas-powered cars. Crazy but true. Harris’s push requiring electric only is failing big, and Michigan autoworkers are paying the price. Massive layoffs already started. She could tank Michigan’s whole economy.”
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Kessler offered his own quick rebuttal before delving into the details.
"This ad has the same bombastic tone that the former president uses in his campaign rallies and in interviews, portraying his rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, as a job-killing liberal lunatic," Kessler wrote.
"But like much of Trump’s rhetoric, the ad is false."
Trump's claims of job-killing and mass layoffs don't tally with Bureau of Labor Statistics data that show U.S. motor vehicle manufacturing employment hit a 34-year high this year and that Michigan auto manufacturing jobs are at their highest level since 2007, Kessler wrote.
The "crazy but true" claim that Harris wants to end all gas-powered cars dates back to her 2020 presidential campaign — and does not acknowledge the Democratic presidential nominee has since changed her position, Kessler reported.
"Presumably the ad left off the sourcing to disguise the fact that this is an old proposal, long ago abandoned," he wrote.
The United Auto Workers, which endorsed Harris for president, has objected to Trump's attack on Biden Administration incentives to expand electric vehicle production in the U.S., stating “We reject the fearmongering that says tackling the climate crisis must come at the cost of union jobs.”
Belzowski confirmed in an email to Kessler that there is "no ‘mandate,'" then detailed the impact such incentives to build and buy electric vehicles have on the U.S. auto industry.
“Lots of incentives for companies to build new plants and retool their plants and incentives for consumers to purchase EVs," he wrote. "Lots of new plants planned and being built to support this ‘moonshot’ project that is similar in some ways to the last major U.S. industrial policy, the building of the U.S. interstate highway system.”
Finally, Kessler points to a "misleading" ad image of an autoworker Trump's campaign linked to complaints of massive Michigan layoffs — despite the fact that the worker is from Rivian, a California-based electric truck manufacturer with only 100 workers in the state.
"Harris does not want to end gas-powered cars, there is no electric-vehicle mandate, and there aren’t massive layoffs in the Michigan auto industry — which now employs more people than at any point in Trump’s presidency," he concluded.
"Virtually nothing is correct in this ad."