Following Donald Trump’s final ruling in his civil fraud trial in New York, a new ad launched on Friday reimagined the former president’s father reacting to the ruling with the use of artificial intelligence (AI).
New York Attorney General Letitia James in a lawsuit filed in September 2022 accused Trump, his two adult sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, The Trump Organization and two firm executives, Allen Weisselberg and Jeff McConney of fraudulently overvaluing assets to secure more favorable bank loans and taxation deals.
On Friday, Engoron ruled that Trump will be fined roughly $355 million and be barred from doing business in New York for three years after a monthslong civil trial from late last year into early January. The trial was to decide the damages Trump would face after Engoron found that he committed fraud by inflating the value of his assets. The other defendants in the case have also faced financial penalties and have been barred from doing business in New York for periods of time.
Trump, the current GOP frontrunner in the 2024 presidential election, has maintained his innocence in the case and claimed it was politically motivated.
Trump’s lawyer Christopher Kise said that the former president will appeal the judge’s ruling, telling Newsweek on Friday that Trump “remains confident the Appellate Division will ultimately correct the innumerable and catastrophic errors made by a trial court untethered to the law or to reality.”
In response to the ruling, The Lincoln Project, a political action committee (PAC) of current and former Republicans who oppose Trump, shared a new ad on Friday featuring an AI-generated version of the former president’s father, Fred Trump, in what they imagine would be his reaction to the judge’s ruling.
“Donny, I always knew you’d blow it. You were always a fool. A joke. Low rent,” the digital recreation of Fred Trump said.
Fred Trump, who founded the Trump Organization back in the 1920s in New York City, died in 1999 due to pneumonia. The former president would later take over the business and pass executive duties down to his own sons, Donald Jr. and Eric.
Steven Hirsch-Pool/Getty Images
According to The Lincoln Project, the ad takes aim at Trump’s ruling to share how Fred Trump would react to how his son “lost the empire his father built.”
“Fred may not be with us now, but in this spot we imagined just how Fred Trump would react to Donald’s record of decades of fraud catching up to him at long last. Trump frequently accuses his critics of using AI to make him look bad. We’ve always said it doesn’t take AI to make Trump look bad; Trump does that all by himself,” Lincoln Project co-founder, Rick Wilson, said in a press release.
The ad goes on to take aim at Trump’s business efforts as his reimagined father states, “The brand I built is crap because of you. You’re trash. You’ll be lucky to stay out of jail. I may have lost my mind, but I never lost my business.”
Newsweek has reached out to The Lincoln Project via email for comment.
When reached for comment by Newsweek on Saturday, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung declined to comment about the ad, but instead, took aim at The Lincoln Project and previous sexual harassment allegations against co-founder John Weaver.
“Lincoln Project was founded by a man accused of sexually abusing young people,” Cheung told Newsweek via email.
The allegations stem from a 2021 New York Times report that published nearly two dozen testimonies that accused Weaver, a Republican political strategist, of sexual harassment stretching back a number of years.
In the report, Weaver acknowledged the sexual harassment messages he sent stating, “I am so disheartened and sad that I may have brought discomfort to anyone in what I thought at the time were mutually consensual discussions.”
Weaver served as an adviser to former presidential candidates John McCain and John Kasich during their respective campaigns. In addition, Weaver is not a participating member of The Lincoln Project.
“John Weaver led a secret life that was built on a foundation of deception at every level. He is a predator, a liar, and an abuser. We extend our deepest sympathies to those who were targeted by his deplorable and predatory behavior,” The Lincoln Project said in a 2021 statement. “We are disgusted and outraged that someone in a position of power and trust would use it for these means.”
Meanwhile, this is not the first time an ad was made using the former president’s father in an effort to criticize Trump’s business practices.
In 2021, MeidasTouch Super PAC featured Trump’s father and their family business, accusing the former president of squandering The Trump Organization fortune.
As part of its ongoing effort to ensure Trump “never gets near the White House again,” the “Fred’s Failure” advertisement described the former president as “fraudulent” and claimed he conned and lied his way through several failed business ventures, including Trump University and Trump Steaks. The ad showed Fred Trump quoting Shakespeare and appearing to foresee his son’s future business failings.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.