The Trump campaign will stop at nothing to look like the Trump campaign is a real campaign, including hiring paid spokesmodels to pledge their support for the president of white women who dress as handmaids.
According to Mediaite, Facebook ads show what are supposed to be regular citizens pledging loyalty to their leader, Donald Trump, but they are really hired guns who would pledge loyalty to a car bumper as long as the pay was right.
“The Trump campaign is spending significant resources on highly manipulative online ads designed to make it appear that he has support from key demographic groups,” Judd Legum writes for his Popular Information newsletter.
“Here is how it works. Trump is not polling well among women in general and young women in particular. So it is running an advertisement on Facebook and Google featuring “Tracey” a young woman who is presented as a big Trump fan.”
“President Trump is doing a great job. I could not ask for a better president of the United States of America,” a voiceover says as a white woman strolls across a beach. The words “Tracey from Florida” appear next to the smiling white woman. The assumption is that the voice playing as “Tracey from Florida” is actually someone named Tracey who lives in Florida, except it’s all bullshit. The voiceover is a paid actor reading a script and the woman walking on the beach is a stock video titled “Summer beach beauty walking” from Istockphoto.com, a company that sells stock images and videos to be used for a multitude of purposes, one of which probably isn’t to trick voters into believing that this is actually Tracey from Florida.
Mediaite notes that it isn’t unusual for campaigns to use paid actors in advertisements, but it’s highly unusual to use stock images as unpaid citizens endorsing the president. Legum notes that there is a small note at the end of the ad that states that the testimonial is truthful but the rest of the ad is bullshit but you’d have to have the eyesight of a hawk wearing x-ray Warby Parkers to see it.