Harris Campaign Trolls Trump With Ad Buy in His Own Backyard

WHEN KAMALA HARRIS’S PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN announced a new attack ad Tuesday, the vice president’s strategists made sure to run it in every battleground state —as well as a single media market in Florida: the one that includes Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach.

In this case, the ad placement itself was the message.

The Harris campaign wouldn’t disclose how much it was spending to run the ad in that corner of Florida. But the AdImpact tracking firm estimates that it will cost at least $50,000 on cable alone. What the campaign does proudly admit, is that it’s waging psychological warfare on Trump.

“We thought it was important for Donald to see how much voters hate his Project 2025 plans to control their lives, seek revenge on his enemies, and rule as a dictator on day one,” said Sarafina Chitika, a Harris spokeswoman. “Trump might forget, but we’ll make sure voters don’t—and they’ll hold him accountable this November.”

The Harris campaign is spending no other ad money in Florida—a sign that they still see the state as out of reach. The new ad is part of the its mammoth $370 million ad campaign in battlegrounds across the country. And while the Sunshine State may not be one of those battlegrounds, Mar-a-Lago looks increasingly like contested turf because of the precious real estate between Trump’s ears. It’s a sign of how much the presidential campaign revolves around his moods.

Just the day before Harris’s announcement, Trump’s own campaign purchased about $50,000 in air time in the same West Palm Beach media market, with the goal of making sure that the ex-president and his friends and donors would see his ads.

“He’s a little on edge these days and it just makes sense for staff to have a little something on air so he’s not wondering why he’s not seeing his stuff on TV,” a Trump confidant said, speaking anonymously. “It is what it is.”

Trump campaign spokesman Brian Hughes criticized the subject of the Harris ad, which focuses on the conservative Project 2025 plans for a new Trump term. Trump once supported the project, but he has come to disavow it as Democrats highlighted unpopular measures and tied them to Trump’s team.

“The attempted links they’ve made to Project 2025 and our campaign and candidate have been debunked numerous times,” Hughes said. “The latest Project 2025 fact check from USA Today—and even a CNN fact check during the Democratic convention—demonstrate what President Trump has said all along: Kamala is dishonest.”

The technique of buying ad time around Mar-a-Lago simply to get inside Trump’s head was first pioneered on May 20, 2020 by the anti-Trump group the Lincoln Project. At the time, founder Rick Wilson wanted to make Trump paranoid about how much his campaign manager, Brad Parscale, was earning. The commercial the group cut seemed to work: Trump lost his cool with Parscale.

“We called it the ‘Audience of One’ ad because we wanted him to see it and anyone else around Mar-a-Lago to see it,” Wilson said. “We geofenced Mar-a-Lago for a digital component of the ad and used all the phones we could track within 1,000 feet of Mar-a-Lago.”

That Lincoln Project ad buy also made sure to account for Trump’s favorite sport.

“The most devious thing we did was run it on the Golf Channel,” Wlson said.

The Harris campaign wasn’t trying to hide the fact that they’re geotargeting Trump with the new spot. Aides inserted a hyperlink to Mar-a-Lago in the press release announcing the ad, explaining that “the Project 2025 ad campaign begins tomorrow on TV and digital across battleground states and the Palm-Beach-Fort Pierce media market.” The spot is also set to run in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Nebraska’s Second Congressional District.