Republicans Running Anti-China Ads Shrug Off Trump Seeking China Reelection Help [HuffPost]

Vulnerable Republican Senators are again being exposed as hypocrites, this time for relying heavily on an NRSC playbook to “attack China” but failing to hold President Trump accountable for asking Chinese President Xi Jinping to help him win re-election. GOP incumbents continue running phony campaign ads and we’re still waiting to hear what they have to say about the reports about Trump’s request for foreign interference in U.S. elections. 

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

HuffPost: Republicans Running Anti-China Campaigns Shrug Off Trump Seeking China Reelection Help

By Kevin Robillard

Key Points:

• Senate Republicans who have been banking on anti-China messages to help them retain their seats and their party’s chamber majority in the 2020 elections say they aren’t bothered by revelations that President Donald Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to help him win reelection and praised Xi’s plan to imprison his nation’s Uighur Muslims in concentration camps.

• “I don’t,” said Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) when asked if he had any reaction to the book. Daines, facing a tough challenge in November from Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D), has run multiple ads promising to get tough on China. 

• North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, hoping to fend off a challenge from Democrat Cal Cunningham, said it was unlikely he would read Bolton’s book. “Probably not,” Tillis said.

• Bolton’s super PAC spent more than $1 million helping Tillis first win election to the Senate in 2014. That was part of the more than $6 million Bolton deployed to help Republicans from 2014 to 2018. 

• But Bolton’s revelations show how difficult it might be for the GOP to effectively mount an anti-China message, given that many of the party’s elected officials have long supported liberalizing trade with China and amid the evidence that Trump is as likely to praise the communist nation’s authoritarian leadership as he is to criticize it.

• “Senate Republicans have spent a lot of money on phony TV ads claiming they’ve stood up to China when the record is clear that they haven’t,” said Helen Kalla, a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokeswoman. “With new reports that President Trump was ‘pleading’ with the president of China to help him get re-elected, let’s see what those Republicans are willing to say now. We’re waiting.”

• In Montana, Daines has aired multiple ads promising to boost “made in America” manufacturing and blaming China for the spread of COVID-19. “We need to break our reliance on China and bring our jobs home,” Daines says in an ad his campaign began airing Thursday.

• Democrats have countered by noting Daines helped Procter and Gamble expand its manufacturing operations in China while working as an executive there in the 1990s, and regularly advocated for closer ties to China before his reelection bid ramped up, taking five official trips to the country during his first term in office. 

• Republicans have been the most aggressive in attacking a Democrat for ties to China in Arizona, where GOP Sen. Martha McSally is trailing in public polling to former astronaut and gun control advocate Mark Kelly.

• Democrats argued McSally’s demonization of China means little if she’s not willing to criticize Trump on the same front. 

• “If ‘getting tough on China’ is more than an empty campaign slogan for Sen. McSally, she’ll forcefully condemn Trump’s actions, including his praise for China’s COVID-19 response and his request for illegal foreign political help,” said Brad Bainum, a spokesman for the Arizona Democratic Party.

Read the full story here.

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