This Pro-Trump Ad Uses Out-of-Context Quotes from Barack Obama's Book to Slam Biden

The ad campaign launched this past Tuesday.

Lawyers for former President Barack Obama have issued a cease-and-desist to a South Carolina Super-PAC group. The Committee to Defend the President launched a campaign using Obama's Dreams From My Father to discredit candidate Joe Biden.

"Joe Biden promised to help our community," the ad begins. "It was a lie. Here's President Obama." The ad then plays a passage from the book which, in context, describes Chicago's political climate before electing its first black mayor in 1983.

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"Plantation politics. Black people in the worst jobs. The worst housing. Police brutality rampant. But when the so-called black committeemen came around election time," the passage continues, "we'd all line up and vote the straight Democratic ticket. Sell our souls for a Christmas turkey."

Obama's spokesperson Katie Hill addressed the ad in a statement. "This despicable ad is straight out of the Republican disinformation playbook," she said. "It’s clearly designed to suppress turnout among minority voters in South Carolina by taking President Obama’s voice out of context and twisting his words to mislead viewers."

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The ad began airing this past Tuesday in South Carolina. Dan Backer, a lawyer for the group, told NBC News it plans to continue showing the ad. "[It's Obama's voice] reading the words he wrote in the context he wrote them. It's absolutely accurate and truthful and correct."

South Carolina's Democratic primary takes place Saturday, February 29, 2020.

H/T: New York Magazine