“In 2016, the thing that Trump was also so successful in was, he could say something, he could label his opponent any way he wants to label his opponent and that would kind of stick, very quickly.

says, as video cuts in showing his father walking around confusedly and then, also on Fox News, talking up the White House response to the coronavirus and making his infamous prediction that it would “at some point just disappear.” It’s gross negligence and honestly it’s worse. In a spot attached to the hashtag, “ByeDonJr,” the President’s son is seen on Fox News railing against an unnamed figure. and Ivanka Trump have combined for more than 14 million views on Twitter. Similar digital videos targeting Donald Trump Jr. That insight has become a commonplace in liberal spaces online, which helps explain why the MeidasTouch ads have touched a nerve – and repeated their viral success. “They’re blaming the things that they’re doing on Biden and on others.” “A lot of what (Trump and his team) are saying is projection,” Ben Meiselas, a civil rights lawyer who represented Colin Kaepernick in his lawsuit against the NFL, told CNN. The Trump campaign did not comment on the ads. The spot that caught Conway’s eye featured President Ronald Reagan’s famous 1980 debate line – “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” – over quick cuts showing contemporary images of bare shelves, coronavirus testing lines, headlines reporting unemployment numbers and, in the finale, Trump being laughed at during his 2018 speech to the United Nations General Assembly. The slick spot follows a theme the brothers, who now operate MeidasTouch as a super PAC – with more than $300,000 in contributions to date, they said – have sharpened over months: using Trump’s own words, and those of his aides and allies, against him. We had followers,” said Brett, the former head of post production for the digital department on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” of their viral breakout. Suddenly we had people paying attention to us. “It got over a million views very quickly. One retweet later, MeidasTouch was on the map and in the game. Brett Meiselas, the brother who cuts the videos, tweeted one at Conway, the Republican lawyer husband of Kellyanne Conway and a Lincoln Project co-founder. Though its practical electoral upside remains a point of debate on the left, the market is ripe for media-makers who can channel liberal frustrations while, if the timing lines up, triggering Trump in the process.įor MeidasTouch, the breakthrough came in late April, with an assist from George Conway.

The freakout secured the group’s status as heroic turncoat provocateurs in the minds of many liberals thirsty for catharsis after nearly four years of Trump’s presidency. When an ad from the Lincoln Project, a Never-Trump Republican super PAC, caught his attention back in May, setting off an after-hours tweetstorm, it succeeded not only in the further upsetting the perpetually mad President, but in generating a news cycle around his pique. Last Tuesday, MeidasTouch announced a five-figure ad buy that has seen the spot air across cable news, with a focus on some of Trump’s favorite Fox News programs. It is there that Trump consumes, for hours on end, cable news programming from the White House – including the commercial breaks. The most direct line into the national presidential media narrative in 2020 runs through the Washington, DC, media market. With an election approaching and liberals’ appetite for anti-Trump content peaking, their audience was already in place. New York natives, the brothers decided that their experiences across different professions – Ben is a lawyer Brett a video editor and Jordan a marketing supervisor – could be folded together to successfully launch an online media and advocacy operation. Opinion and aggregation soon turned into the rapid production of political videos. Ben, 35, Brett, 30, and 27-year-old Jordan Meiselas had been captive audiences to Trump’s coronavirus press conferences and, feeling frustrated and angry with time on their hands, started a blog. Billionaire Democrats and small-dollar donors help fuel anti-Trump Lincoln Projectįrom their respective pandemic lockdowns in New York and Los Angeles earlier this year, the three brothers who founded MeidasTouch began to turn over an idea – and an opportunity.

Midas touch