President Biden is using the anniversary of the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) passage to criticize former President Trump’s record on health care and take advantage of his threats to repeal the law.
In a new digital ad released Friday before the 14th anniversary of the law, the Biden campaign aimed to emphasize Trump’s repeated repeal threats and emphasize the consequences if he were to win a second term.
The video, titled “Flatline,” plays audio of Trump’s criticism of ObamaCare while the screen details what repealing the law would do.
“Donald Trump tried to rip away our health care,” the ad said. “He failed. But he’s coming back for it.”
The messages are played over an image of a heart monitor that eventually flatlines.
As president, Trump was just one vote away from repealing the law and has said he wants to try again.
“If he succeeds … 45 million Americans could lose their health insurance,” the ad said. “And you could be one of them.”
The campaign said the ad will run on digital platforms including Meta, YouTube, and connected TV in English and Spanish across battleground states.
In addition to the ad, the campaign is holding a digital rally this weekend with former President Obama and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). The national call is meant to “mobilize supporters and volunteers around protecting the ACA from Trump’s attacks,” the campaign said.
The Democratic National Committee is also running battleground state digital ads criticizing Trump for his ACA repeal efforts.
The ads will appear as digital homepage takeovers of local newspaper websites in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin.
The Biden campaign and Democratic allies have enthusiastically jumped into a fight with Trump over ObamaCare, after the presumptive GOP nominee has floated taking another run at repealing the law.
More than 40 million people have health insurance through ObamaCare, and the law is more popular than ever. Biden campaign officials believe preserving it is a major political issue, as sign-ups for 2024 coverage hit a record 21.3 million.
Biden and Democrats have long felt health care is a winning issue for them, and the president has leaned into the pocketbook issue of lowering people’s costs amid broad concerns about the economy.
“We can’t take this progress for granted. Extreme MAGA Republicans have voted over 50 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Just this week, Trump’s allies in the House proposed a budget that would gut this life-saving legislation,” Biden said in a statement Friday, referring to the Republican Study Committee’s budget proposal.
“It’s not hyperbole to say that affordable health care for millions of people is on the line in November. I am more determined than ever to beat back MAGA Republican attacks and make health care a right and not a privilege in America,” Biden said.
The Biden campaign is also trying to use Trump’s “are you better off” argument against him.
On Friday, Biden’s team highlighted a clip from a press conference from exactly four years ago in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when Trump said he wanted to “terminate” ObamaCare and reiterated his support for a lawsuit seeking to end the law.
The campaign said that taking away health care from millions of Americans is always a bad idea, but it was especially bad when Trump tried to do it in March 2020, during a time when thousands of Americans were dying. They also mentioned that Trump and his campaign keep asking if the country is better off now than it was four years ago, and the answer is repeatedly yes.
