Representatives for former US President Barack Obama announced on Wednesday they would send a cease and desist letter condemning a TV ad in South Carolina using ex-president’s voice to attack former Vice President Joe Biden, running in the 2020 presidential election.
According to attorneys, the ad, paid for by the pro-Trump ‘Committee to Defend the President’, is misleading, and uses sections of an Obama book out of context.
"This despicable ad is straight out of the Republican disinformation playbook, and 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," Obama spokeswoman Katie Hill said in a statement.
Obama's lawyers called on all media to “take this ad down and stop playing into the hands of bad actors who seek to sow division and confusion among the electorate”.
"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, we'd all line up and vote the straight Democratic ticket. Sell our souls for a Christmas turkey,” Obama is heard saying in the ad.
The statement noted that Obama has many friends among the Democratic presidential hopefuls, citing earlier remarks that he “has no plans to endorse in the primary” because he believes that in order for Democratic candidates to be “successful”, voters must decide on their nominee.
In response the GOP campaign, Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates noted that the political ad displayed a “despicable torrent of misinformation", according to The Washington Post.
"Donald Trump and his allies are absolutely terrified that Joe Biden will defeat him in November. Trump even got himself impeached by trying to force another country to lie about the vice president," Bates said. "This latest intervention in the Democratic primary is one of the most desperate yet, a despicable torrent of misinformation by [Trump's] lackeys."
The so-called Committee to Defend the President recently released a similar ad in Spanish ahead of the Nevada caucus, in an attempt to criticize Biden and Obama on immigration.