Trump Campaign Spends $10 Million On 60-Second Super Bowl Ad

President Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign is starting the New Year with an extremely splashy ad buy: According to Politico, which cited four sources who had been briefed on the plan, the campaign is planning to drop $10 million on a Super Bowl ad.

That massive sum will get Trump just one minute of air time during the Feb. 2 championship game, though it’s unclear whether Trump is planning two 30-second slots, or 1 60-second spot.

The campaign has purchased 60 seconds of commercial time during the Feb. 2 Super Bowl, which is likely to be the most-watched television event of the year. The ad or ads — it’s unclear whether it will be a single 60-second spot or a pair of 30-second commercials — are expected to run early in the game, when viewership is likely to be at its highest.

The Super Bowl is set to take place just one day before the Iowa caucuses, marking the beginning of the primary season for Democrats (and the handful of delusional Republicans who are officially challenging Trump for the Republican nomination). That ought to help Trump hold on to some headline real-estate as the results come in, while also distracting from the inevitable barrage of impeachment headlines.

In addition to the ad blitz, the campaign is also planning to spend millions on outreach to key voting blocs, including Latinos, Blacks and women, during the coming months.

They have also approved plans to spend millions of dollars on outreach to key voting blocs including women, evangelicals, Latinos, and African Americans. Trump campaign recently launched an aggressive effort to woo black voters, taking out ads on African American-owned radio and newspapers.

“The president’s decision to stay aggressive and keep the campaign open after his first election gave us a huge head start on his reelection,” Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement, referring to the president’s announcement within days of his 2017 inauguration that he would seek reelection. “Now 300 days out we are throttling up. The president has built an awesome, high-performance, omnichannel machine and it’s time to give it some gas.”

This isn’t the first time Trump’s 2020 campaign has advertised during a major sports game: It also ran commercials during the World Series last year declaring that Trump’s “no Mr. Nice Guy, but sometimes it takes a Donald Trump to change Washington.”

That the Trump 2020 campaign is going all-in on television ads is unsurprising. Twitter recently banned political ads, and Facebook has reportedly floated the idea of limiting political ads during the 2020 cycle, as the company’s refusal to fact-check political ads has infuriated liberals.

The president is also sitting on a campaign war chest that dwarfs the money raised by the leading Democratic candidates. As we noted a few days back, Trump raised $46 million in Q4. In total, his campaign has raised more than $100 million, and together with the RNC, is heading into the spring with more than $200 million on hand.

Of course, Trump isn’t the only candidate dropping big bucks on a Super Bowl ad: The New York Times has already reported that Michael Bloomberg’s self-funded campaign has also spent $10 million on an ad to “take on Trump” during the nation’s biggest sporting event.

But Bloomberg’s wallet is still far bigger than his following. His campaign has already dropped $170 million on television ads, setting records for ad spending by a candidate. But his support is still languishing in the single digits.

Meanwhile, President Trump commands the approval of more than 90% of Republicans, and polls have shown that the Democrats’ impeachment push has done nothing to sway the public to turn on the president.