CLEVELAND — President Donald Trump’s tweet urging people to stop buying from Goodyear is still making an impact.
An anti-Trump organization, The Lincoln Project, is using the tweet in a new attack ad being shown in Northeast Ohio. It is also on the group’s YouTube page.
The ad from the Republican funded and supported group moves fast. The words and sound are quick. The ad is less than 40 seconds long.
Twelve seconds in, the ad references a tweet the president made on Aug. 19.
Don’t buy GOODYEAR TIRES - They announced a BAN ON MAGA HATS. Get better tires for far less! (This is what the Radical Left Democrats do. Two can play the same game, and we have to start playing it now!).
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 19, 2020
“Don’t buy GOODYEAR TIRES,” is the only line in the tweet that made the ad.
The ad makes claims about what Trump's tweet could do to Goodyear and the impact it would have on more than 3,000 Union workers.
“Looking at it, it basically depicts what President Trump tweeted,” News 5 Political Analyst Tom Sutton said.
Quentin James is the president of The Collective Pac, an Ohio based group working to get Black candidates elected to office. He said both parties can stretch claims in ads.
"But when you have things like quantifiable deaths due to coronavirus, quantifiable unemployment numbers from the state government those numbers are easily found online,” James said.
Sutton and James are in agreement—the numbers in the ad are accurate.
"Wow, I can't believe all of this is happening but it's true,” James said. “It's very factual."
Trump's tweet continued: “They announced a BAN ON MAGA HATS. Get better tires for far less! (This is what the Radical Left Democrats do. Two can play the same game, and we have to start playing it now!)”
The second part of the tweet, referenced information in a report from WIBW, a television station in Topeka, Kansas. The station published a story of a slide, purportedly from the company's diversity training, showing what’s acceptable and what isn’t as part of Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company’s zero-tolerance policy.
On Wednesday, Goodyear tire released a statement addressing the misconceptions about its policies and company.
The company said the widely circulated image was not part of any diversity training class.
It was the first line of Trump's tweet that set off a firestorm online and in Akron.
"He wasn't worried about the workers. He wasn't worried about you,” said Rep. Tavia Galonski, D - 35th District, during a rally in the city supporting union workers after the tweet.
"That is not going to happen in Akron. That is not what we do in Akron. We stand up for our people,” said Ohio House Minority Leader democrat Emilia Sykes during the rally.
After 2016 and with misinformation pervasive, James said people are watching advertisements closely.
"Everyone is cracking down on the types of things they're allowing to be advertised,” he said.
Ads like this from the Lincoln Project are meant to do two things, Sutton said. The first is to energize voters and the second is to sway independents. He said too many extreme ads can backfire and turn voters off.
"I would characterize it as not that extreme,” Sutton said about the Lincoln Project ad. “Because it uses a fair amount of factual evidence of what President Trump has tweeted out related to Goodyear."
News 5 reached out to the Lincoln Project about the ad but the group did not respond before deadline. In a press release on the group’s webpage, leadership said the group spent $425,000 to run the ad in Northeast Ohio for a week.
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