Obama Sends Cease & Desist To TV Stations For Anti-Biden Ad ‘Twisting’ His Words
Image via Evan El-Amin / Shutterstock.com
On Tuesday night, South Carolina television stations aired an advert misrepresenting Obama’s audio narration from his own book, using his words to admonish Joe Biden.
The ad was circulated by a pro-Trump group called Committee to Defend the President, who purportedly spent more than US$250,000 in South Carolina to rally against Biden.
It begins with a narrator announcing, “Joe Biden promised to help our community. It was a lie. Here’s President Obama.” The commercial soon plays audio from Obama’s passage in his 1995 novel, Dreams from My Father, which touches on the unfair treatment to black voters by politicians.
Obama’s audio highlights a quote from a barber speaking about Chicago’s first black mayor, Harold Washington.
However, it was projected against Biden, and even ends with the message, “Enough. Joe Biden won’t represent us, defend us, or help us. Don’t believe Biden’s empty promises.”
Obama has sent a cease-and-desist letter to South Carolina television networks to stop airing the ads containing the “unauthorized use of President Obama's name, image, likeness, voice and book passage” from “a completely different context more than 20 years ago,” the letter read.
“[The ad is] designed to suppress turnout among minority voters in South Carolina by taking President Obama’s voice out of context and twisting his words to mislead viewers,” Katie Hill, Obama’s communications director said in a statement. “In the interest of truth in advertising, we are calling on TV stations to take this ad down.”
Our new ad playing in South Carolina: @JoeBiden joined segregationists, wrote a bill that disproportionately jailed African Americans, & blamed black parents for inequality. He will not represent us. pic.twitter.com/9qkiOOYn0V
— Defend Trump (@Defend_Trump) February 26, 2020
[via CNN, cover image via Evan El-Amin / Shutterstock.com]
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