Pro-Trump ad touting American workers uses photos of overseas workers – Mother Jones

Left: A screenshot of a pro-Trump ad celebrating American workers. Right: A screenshot of an archival clip produced by Azulroto, a Spanish production company.Mother Jones

Good for Americaa super PAC funded by a handful of billionaires who support Donald Trump, recently released an ad promoting Trump’s various tax proposals and celebrating American workers, especially those who work overtime. It’s filled with photos and videos purportedly showing workers working overtime — “our country’s hardest-working citizens” — including a welder, a truck driver and a hospital worker. Yet many of these images are stock footage or photos of workers in foreign countries, and the advertising is overall misleading, leaving aside Trump’s past opposition to compensating employees who work overtime .

The 30-second spot, airing in key states, hails Trump’s promise to end Social Security taxes, tipping and overtime. Not surprisingly, he avoids the basic facts about these propositions. Budget experts have pointed out that eliminating Social Security taxes would cause Social Security and Medicare to become insolvent sooner than expected and increase the national deficit by $1.1 trillion over 10 years. Suspending the overtime tax would cost $1.7 trillion over a decade. Ending taxes on tips probably won’t help most workers who rely on tips (many of them are low-income earners who don’t pay much in taxes) and could lead to a whole host of problems .

There are two ridiculous aspects of the ad: the depiction of Trump as a champion of overtime and the incorporation of images of non-American workers. When Trump was president, his administration eliminated a rule proposed by the Obama administration to require companies to provide overtime compensation to about 4.1 million workers. Trump’s Labor Department rule covered only 1.3 million people, hurting nearly 3 million American workers. The business community fought fiercely against Obama’s proposal, and Trump came to its rescue. As the ABC News headline: New overtime is a ‘win for business executives,’ economists say.

And as a businessman, Trump has not been a champion of overtime. At a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, last month, Trump discussed his experience as a businessman dealing with overtime. “I know a lot about overtime,” he said. “I hated working overtime.” He reiterated that he would employ new workers to replace those who were supposed to work overtime. “I shouldn’t say this,” he added, “but I would bring other people in.” I wouldn’t pay. I hated it.

Trump’s refusal to compensate workers and contractors has been widely documented. In 2016, The United States today reported that Trump’s companies had been “cited for 24 violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act since 2005 for failure to pay overtime or minimum wage, according to U.S. Department of Labor data.” In 2019, the Washington Post revealed that employees at Trump National Golf Club Westchester in Briarcliff Manor, New York, were forced to work without pay after leaving their positions. This was called “side work.” The Trump Organization has denied this happened.

In addition to the ad’s misleading content, the spot features slow-motion, heroic footage of so-called American workers. But in several cases, they are not Americans but foreign workers. A photo of a welder comes from an archive image taken by a photographer in the Netherlands and available (at a low price) on a Portuguese site. The images of a bicycle delivery man date back to an image company in Thailand and were also available on the Portuguese site. The video of a woman dressed in surgical garb – whether a doctor or nurse – was produced by a Ukrainian company. And a clip of a chef in a kitchen comes from a video made by a Spanish production company.

The creators of the Right for America spot didn’t bother to find real Americans for the ad.

Right for America is funded by a small group of billionaire friends of Trump. Its biggest backers are Ike Perlmutter and his wife Laura, who together have raised at least $20 million. He is a former CEO of Marvel Entertainment and has a reputation as an eccentric mogul who avoids being photographed. Other major donors include venture capitalist Douglas Leone, former managing partner of Sequoia Capital; Robert Book, co-vice chairman of the board of directors of Axxes Capital; and garbage hauling magnate Anthony Lomangino. The Perlmutters and Lomangino are members of Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s club. The PAC is led by Sergio Gor, a Trump family friend once nicknamed the “Mayor of Mar-a-Lago.”

Right for America is just one of several billionaire-funded PACs that, in the final weeks of the election, are flooding television, radio and social media in swing states with ads to help Trump. According to Axios, the company has booked about $40 million in ads through Election Day. And the New York Times reported spending $500,000 to air the spot in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona and $360,000 to air a Spanish-language version, primarily in Arizona.

This ad, which shows video of Trump getting back to his feet after a gunman shot him at a campaign rally in July, claims that “for too long, no one in Washington has cared” about the hours additional and declares that Trump is the only man. who will do it. It’s astonishing that billionaires would spend so much money convincing voters that Trump is a defender of hard-working workers, when he has deceived them as a businessman and president. Their pitch is as bogus as the stock footage used to sell it.