It's been three months since Donald Trump wrapped up the GOP primary to officially become the candidate tagged to challenge Democrat Hillary Clinton in the general presidential election. Since that time, Trump hasn't spent a single dime on campaign advertisements in important swing states against Clinton. Guy detailed this problem yesterday.
The Trump camp did release an email scandal video in early July, but it didn't actually air anywhere -- nor have any general election ads paid for by his campaign. Zero. She's still shutting him out on the airwaves. It's mid-August, he's unequivocally losing, yet his camp is still in the process of looking at reserving airtime in the fall.
Until now. Things are finally changing.
The Trump campaign has just dropped $60 million dollars on a series of advertisements that will run in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Nevada and North Carolina starting this week.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's campaign will begin airing its first television ads of the general election in the coming days, the campaign confirms to NPR.
The ads will air in Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Nevada and North Carolina — all key battleground states where Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has taken leads or grown her leads in recent polls. It was not immediately known how much the Trump campaign would spend in this initial ad buy.
Trump has insisted that he does not need to run traditional TV ads, given the attention he gets from free media coverage and his reach on social media.
"I don't even know why I need so much money," Trump said at a campaign rally in Maine back in June. "I go around, I make speeches, I talk to reporters. I don't even need commercials, if you want to know the truth."
The ad buy announcement came just hours before the Trump campaign announced the hiring of a new campaign manager, longtime pollster and GOP operative Kellyanne Conway. Conway is the third manager of the campaign since May.