JIM TREACHER: In New Biden Ad, Michigan Millionaire Claims Trump Is Killing His Nightclub.
My first thought when I saw this ad was: Bro, you live in Ann Arbor. Which is in Michigan. A Democrat-led city in a Democrat-led state. Under Gretchen Whitmer’s iron fist, you Michiganders are subject to the strictest lockdown in the country. Yet somehow your plight is the fault of the Republicans? Even a blind pig can do better than that.
But it’s even more dishonest than I thought. With Biden, it usually is. Collin Anderson, Washington Free Beacon:
The struggling Michigan bar owner at the center of a Joe Biden campaign ad is actually a wealthy tech investor whose startup was seeded by a large family inheritance.
The ad, which the Biden campaign released Thursday, identifies Michigan entrepreneur Joe Malcoun as co-owner of the Blind Pig, a bar and live music venue in Ann Arbor, Mich…
According to a 2018 interview with local NBC affiliate Click on Detroit, Malcoun became a well-known “angel investor” in local tech startups after receiving a large inheritance from his wife’s late grandfather roughly a decade ago. He described the inheritance as “almost like winning the lottery…”
Malcoun has also repeatedly praised Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer’s (D.) coronavirus response, saying she “is doing it right” in an April tweet.
So, millionaire tech investor Joe Malcoun is blaming Trump because Whitmer’s lockdown is ruining the small business he runs as a hobby. That seems a bit dishonest, no matter who you’re voting for or why.
The Biden campaign has pulled the ad, but here’s a copy of it; I’ve downloaded the video in case this one gets, as Jeffrey Toobin would say, yanked:
I don’t usually tweet campaign ads but the Biden “Blind Pig” ad is really good. As a early millennial, I thought the use of The Pixies and Beastie Boys music in the ad was tremendous.pic.twitter.com/CU4xkD83TR
— Matt Soffer 😷🎃👻🕷🦇 (@matthewsoffer) October 18, 2020
Note the use of the Beastie Boys’ classic thrash-metal song “Sabotage*” in the ad, which having since been (again, as Toobin would say) pulled, is a classic case of “self-sabotage” by the surviving Beasties, who have now politicized a body of work that had plenty of followers on the sides of the aisle. (Including Treacher himself.)
* Recorded so long ago, as Treacher notes at the first link, it was back “when Joe was a mere 51 years young.”