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Trump puts $2 million behind ad attacking Clinton's 'basket of deplorables' comment

Clinton's campaign and her allied committees, by contrast, have already spent over $100 million on general election ads
CNN

The Donald Trump campaign unveiled a new ad Monday attacking Democrat Hillary Clinton for her comments last Friday at a swanky fundraiser that half of the Republican nominee's supporters fall into a "basket of deplorables."

Speaking to a crowd at Cipriani on Wall Street, Clinton described these voters as "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that."

Trump immediately took to Twitter Saturday morning to unleash a tweetstorm, saying that Clinton's remarks were "SO INSULTING," and his staff quickly turned the footage into its new ad "Deplorables." The ad will run this week in Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Florida with a $2 million ad buy "at least to start," according to the Trump campaign.

Clinton's campaign and her allied committees, by contrast, have already spent over $100 million on general election ads and have booked another $100 million more in advertising time for the fall. Despite being outspent on television advertising more than any major party nominee in modern history over the summer, Trump's RealClearPolitics polling average is nearly identical to what it was in early June.

Even with the recent ad buys over the past month, it's unclear if the Republican nominee expects that they will be any more effective than Clinton's barrage of ads. Back in June, Trump expressed skepticism about whether he needed advertising at all. "You know, I go around, I make speeches," he said. "I talk to reporters. I don't even need commercials, if you want to know the truth. Why do I need these commercials?"