President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign is hoping former President Donald Trump’s recent comments about NATO countries will turn off voters in key so-called “blue wall” battleground states, launching a new ad seeking to paint his predecessor’s comments as dangerous for American security. 

The new messaging blitz caps off a week in which the president and his reelection team have sought to highlight Trump’s suggestion that he would encourage Russia to attack delinquent allies, with Biden calling it “dumb,” “shameful,” “dangerous,” and “un-American” from the White House. 

What You Need To Know

  • President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign is hoping former President Donald Trump’s threats against NATO countries will turn off voters in the key so-called “blue wall” states
  • The campaign on Friday announced it is launching a new ad seeking to paint his predecessor’s comments on the alliance as dangerous for American security
  • The new messaging blitz caps off a week in which the president and his reelection team have sought to highlight Trump’s suggestion that he would tell Russia to attack delinquent allies, a comment that Trump doubled down on this week 
  • The new one-minute spot will run in the battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – areas home to a large population of Americans from NATO countries bordering Russia and three states that flipped from red to blue in 2020 to help send Biden to the Oval Office 

The new one-minute spot will run in the battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – areas home to a large population of Americans from NATO countries bordering Russia and three states that flipped from red to blue in 2020 to help send Biden to the Oval Office. 

In total, the states are home to more than 2.5 million people with Polish, Finnish, Norwegian, Lithuanian, Latvian, or Estonian roots, according to the campaign. Biden’s reelection team made the case the countries could be at risk of invasion by Russia if Russian President Vladimir Putin is successful with his goals in Ukraine. 

“For 75 years, NATO has been the most important military alliance in the world, it’s been the cornerstone of America's security,” the ad starts. “It’s how we won the cold war and defeated the soviet union.”

The spot goes on to note the only time Article 5 of the NATO treaty – which stipulates that an armed attack against one member country is an armed attack against all allies –  has been invoked was “to stand with America” after the terrorist attacks on 9/11. 

“Every president since Truman has been a rock-solid supporter of NATO, except for Donald Trump,” the ad goes on to argue before pledging that Biden would stand up for the alliance. 

Trump this week twice doubled down on his threat that he would not defend member countries of the alliance that do not meet defense spending targets. 

The former president set off alarms across Europe when he said he would encourage Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to NATO member countries that do not contribute enough to military spending. 

“The bottom line is that the only person Donald Trump is loyal to is Donald Trump – not to our allies and certainly not to the American people. And while he thinks that sucking up to Putin and other dictators will make him strong, the American people know him for who he truly is: a coward and a loser,” Biden-Harris 2024 Campaign Manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement. 

The new ad will run for three weeks through Super Tuesday, when 15 states and one territory will cast 2024 primary ballots. 

It comes as the future of additional U.S. aid to Ukraine hangs in the balance, hinging on a skeptical GOP House leadership as the country readies to enter its third year of war. 

The Senate on Tuesday passed a $95 billion package with aid to Ukraine, along with Israel, the Indo-Pacific and more, after a border deal – negotiated over weeks by a bipartisan group of senators and the White House – was dropped from the bill amid GOP opposition. Republicans had initially insisted Biden’s foreign aid request be tied to significant border policy changes. 

The fate of additional U.S. aid to Ukraine now appears to rest on whether GOP leadership will bring the bill up for a vote in the lower chamber – where many Republicans are against sending more assistance to the country, arguing Washington must address its own problems at the border first, the U.S. cannot keep spending money on the war and the Biden administration has not laid out a clear plan as it how Ukraine wins and the conflict ends. 

Biden earlier this week urged House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to put the package up for a vote “immediately,” making the case it will garner enough support from Democrats and Republicans combined to pass. 

In that speech from the White House on Tuesday, Biden also offered a forceful condemnation of Trump’s comments on NATO, saying they “sent a dangerous and shocking and, frankly, un-American signal to the world.”

Spectrum News' Joseph Konig contributed to this report