Trump, Biden campaigns flood battleground Florida with surrogates
Barack Obama, Ivanka Trump stump in Sunshine State; Phil Keating has the latest on ‘Special Report.’
Bloomberg News was forced to walk back a report on Tuesday indicating that the Trump campaign was throwing in the towel in the crucial swing state of Florida.
With just seven days until the presidential election, Bloomberg News ran the headline “Trump Pulls Florida Ads as Cash-Poor Campaign Enters Final Week.”
“President Donald Trump’s campaign has all but pulled its advertising out of Florida, as it stakes its relatively small bank account on the industrial northern states that carried him to victory in 2016,” the report began. “Trump is now placing his final bet on just four battleground states: Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Polls show he’s down in all those states but Ohio, where it’s effectively even.”
Except that wasn’t the case.
Several members of the Trump campaign flooded Twitter pushing back against Bloomberg News’ “false” report. The Trump campaign also claimed Bloomberg News never reached out for comment.
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“The Bloomberg story is horribly wrong and should never have been written. The campaign, with the RNC coordinated buy, is up with a seven figure buy in Florida on broadcast TV alone,” Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh said in a statement to Fox News. “In addition in Florida, we are up with six figures in local cable, six figures in Spanish language, and six figures on radio. Our ad buying week by week in the state has been consistent, and the reporting on this issue demonstrates a clear misunderstanding of how ad buying works (and in some cases a misunderstanding of simple addition and subtraction).”
Murtaugh continued, “Last week we announced a $ 55 million buy over the final two weeks, which is a 40 percent increase over our previous levels. Just yesterday we added $ 6 million on top of that for the final week. Including Florida, the Trump campaign is on television in 12 states and also nationally. This is sloppy reporting at the highest level.”
Politico reporter Marc Caputo pushed back against the viral report, saying “the campaign switched payee to the RNC. Ads are still running.”
Even Advertising Analytics, a go-to source for political ad spending, had to debunk the report.
“Lots of confusion around Trump Florida buy. Here’s the fact: Trump camp not pulling out of Florida. Full stop,” Advertising Analytics firmly stated.
The outlet ultimately issued a correction, writing at the bottom, “Corrects story to include context that was missing from earlier version on additional spending planned by the Republican National Committee on Trump’s behalf.”
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The headline was also changed to, “Trump Campaign Shifts Florida Ad Spend Burden to RNC.”
Bloomberg News did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment.
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