Hillary Clinton’s campaign released a new TV ad Monday recalling perhaps the most famous campaign ad in American history.
The ad, “Daisy,” features the same actress and the same message as Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 ad of the same name: Don’t trust the opponent with nuclear weapons.
Fifty-two years after 3-year-old Monique Corzilius Luiz appeared in Johnson’s visually striking ad warning voters that Republican-outsider-turned-nominee Barry Goldwater could not be trusted with nuclear weapons, she narrates a similar ad and references a similar candidate.
“This was me in 1964,” Luiz says over footage of the original ad, which features a nuclear explosion interrupting a girl picking flowers. “The fear of nuclear war that we had as children, I never thought our children would ever have to deal with that again. And to see that coming forward in this election is really scary.”
The ad then cuts to a clip of MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough relating an anecdote he claims a foreign policy expert advising Trump had relayed to him. Scarborough claims Trump asked the advisor three times, “Why can’t we use nuclear weapons?” The MSNBC host then asks stunned former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden what safeguards there are to stop a president who decides to use nuclear force.
“The commander-in-chief is the commander-in-chief,” the ad shows Hayden responding.
The 30-second TV ad also features Trump bragging that he wants to be “unpredictable” with regard to the United States’ nuclear capability. A longer version posted to Clinton’s Twitter account includes Trump saying he would allow Japan and Saudi Arabia to have nuclear weapons.
Politico reported the 30-second ad is expected to air during nightly newscasts in Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The size of the ad buy was unclear.
Watch below:
And it’s not just Daisy Girl! Bill Bradley put together a PAC and they’re running an ad in Ohio talking about how it would be (ahem) unwise to give Trump nukes to play with. So you takes your choice, “What?!? More Emails!?” versus “Don’t Give Crazy People Nukes.” Who will win??? Stay tuned!!!
GOP: Clinton is playing in our hand. Our supporters and Amerika wants to destroy the evil world by bombing them. Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran. Thanks for GOTV for Trump.
The Daisy Girl ad only ran once. That is all it needed to run back then. The idea of a crazy guy having the nuclear codes scared the hell out of all of us. I guess today, not so much.
Nice ad (actually very good), but too short … but maybe that’s part of the strategy: short and sweet, so-to-speak, or at least short but very thought-provoking.
The symbolism of this is great on so many levels.
Same Daisy.
Same effort to prevent an unshackled madman from getting the nuclear codes.
GOTV