Because he declines to criticize a United States president who is out of the country, Democratic 2020 presidential frontrunner Joe Biden waited 30 minutes after Donald Trump arrived back in the United States on Wednesday to release his toughest campaign ad yet, according to NBC News correspondent Maria Sotomayor, via Twitter .
The sharply pointed Biden ad titled “Laughed At” opens with footage of other world leaders at the now-completed NATO summit in London openly ridiculing Trump, an incident that may have caused the U.S. leader to hurriedly depart the summit meeting early.
The ad, which may be seen below on this page, includes voice-over from news commentators stating that the other NATO leaders were “mocking” Trump and “laughing at him.”
And in a Twitter comment accompanying a posting of the ad on the social media platform, Biden also says, “the world is laughing at President Trump.”
“They see him for what he really is,” Biden says in the Twitter post, “dangerously incompetent and incapable of world leadership.”
The ad appeared well-received on Twitter, by Democrats at least.
“This is a very good ad and smart strategy from the Biden campaign,” wrote former White House advisor to President Barack Obama Dan Pfeiffer, a current co-host of the popular Pod Save America podcast, on Twitter . Pfeiffer explained that “restoring America’s standing in the world” following the “disaster” of the George W. Bush administration served as a winning strategy for Obama in 2008.
In the ad, Biden himself warns that a second Trump term will cause the United States “a great deal of difficulty” in recovering “America’s standing” around the globe.
The ad appears to recognize Biden’s frontrunner status in the 2020 Democratic primary by going straight after Trump with no mention of any of Biden’s competitors for the party’s nomination.
Biden is also the frontrunner in the general election against Trump. In the latest head-to-head poll pitting the former vice president against Trump in a one-on-one general election matchup, Biden easily outpaced Trump by 13 percentage points.
Perhaps more importantly, among the white voters who were most responsible for Trump’s 2016 Electoral College victory, Biden trailed Trump by only two points, 47-45. In 2016, Trump won 58 percent of white voters, to only 37 percent for the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Trump must hold a significant lead among whites in order to have a chance of victory in 2020 because Biden dominates among non-white voters.
In the Real Clear Politics average of all Biden vs. Trump head-to-head polls, Biden holds a gaping 9.9 point lead. He has led Trump in 33 of the 35 head-to-head polls taken since Biden announced his candidacy on April 25.