Biden campaign goes long with new football-themed ad

President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign launched a new digital ad in battleground markets timed with the NFL draft that leans into the football metaphors (“make the right pick in November”) and pokes fun at former President Donald Trump for his previous derisive comments about the game. 

“First Pick #46” is a digital ad on YouTube that will target voters in key markets including Green Bay, Wisconsin, home of the Packers; Detroit, Michigan, home of the Lions; and Pittsburgh, home of the six-time Super Bowl champion Steelers. 

The ad equates Trump’s lack of interest in football as evidence he’s “out of touch with what’s going on in living rooms across America,” according to a statement from the Biden campaign. The ad shows clips of Trump, the presumptive 2024 GOP presidential nominee, calling football “boring as hell” and saying “nobody cares about” the sport, along with clips of Biden greeting football players at the White House.

“In a time where Americans come together to celebrate a sport that unites this country, we can expect Donald Trump to be sitting on the sidelines trying to make tonight about himself, rage-posting on his failing social media platform and spewing his extreme, divisive, and historically unpopular agenda,” second gentleman Douglas Emhoff, who is attending the NFL draft, said in a statement on the ad. 

In response, Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung posted “Here’s what a real athlete looks like,” to social media, including a video clip with a date stamp of 1992 showing Trump throwing a football.

The three-day draft kicked off Thursday and continues through Saturday. For the record, the Steelers picked offensive lineman Troy Fautanu from the University of Washington with the 20th pick in the first round, and the Eagles picked cornerback Quinyon Mitchell of the University of Toledo with the 22nd pick.