President Trump’s campaign sent a letter to “Biden For President” on Wednesday demanding that it remove an ad from social media that contains false and misleading information about President Trump.
“Mr. Biden and the Biden Campaign should immediately cease and desist using the False and Misleading Ad and issue a public apology to the millions of servicemembers whose morale Mr. Biden is attempting to damage by posting the False and Misleading Ad in the first place,” the letter states.
The letter accuses the Biden campaign of posting an ad to Twitter with debunked accusations about President Trump’s canceled visit to a military cemetery in France and false “derogatory comments towards fallen American military heroes.”
The ad attributes quotes to Trump that 21 people who were present that day say never happened, displayed over footage of military men and women in uniform and military cemeteries. It concludes with a quote saying “If you don’t respect our troops, you can’t lead them.” Trump flatly denies ever having made such statements and the letter tells the Biden campaign to stop smearing Trump by attributing malignant quotes to him the Biden campaign cannot prove are accurate.
Mr. President, if you don’t respect our troops, you can’t lead them. pic.twitter.com/hcX9hGgdm5
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 4, 2020
The allegations against President Trump were first published in a story by Atlantic Editor in Chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who says four anonymous sources made the claims. Immediately after the story was published, however, several prominent officials who were there said the reporting was false, including former National Security Advisor John Bolton, who since leaving the Trump administration has become a prominent Trump critic.
The letter from “Donald J. Trump For President” points out that the anonymous accounts cited in The Atlantic article “were directly contradicted on the record by twenty-one individuals present with President Trump that day” and provides a list of people who have gone on the record to refute The Atlantic’s false claims about the incident.
“Mr. Biden and the Biden Campaign’s willful ignorance of the facts shows Mr. Biden’s weakness, lack of vision, and absolute lack of decency toward our veterans,” the letter states. “Mr. Biden attempts to score cheap political points at the expense of our great American military heroes.”
In addition, the Trump campaign noted the president’s “record of achievements for our American military heroes” including increased funding, benefits, employment, and student debt loan forgiveness for Veteran programs as well as visits and memorials “honoring our American military heroes.”
The Trump campaign also noted that, despite their previous devotion to “fact-checking” the president, Facebook and Twitter have not yet flagged the ad as false or misleading and will be asked to do so. The letter copied the executives of those media companies.
“Now, Twitter and Facebook—if they are truly trying to be fair arbiters of factually accurate statements—will be obligated to remove your False and Misleading Ad, which is based solely on cites to anonymous sources,” the letter states.
The letter concluded stating that “President Trump is committed to ensuring that the voting public is free to make electoral decisions based upon the President’s actual record without interference from deliberately false, misleading, and deceptive advertisements” and that it “had hoped the Biden Campaign would show the same commitment to fairness and honesty.”
