A billboard knocking Donald Trump as a “convicted white-collar crook” will greet the former president during his first visit as a felon to Sin City, where he will hold a campaign rally on Sunday.
The ad, displayed along an interstate in Las Vegas a few miles from the rally site and paid for by the Democratic National Committee, hits Trump on two levels — as corrupt and criminal — as the party becomes increasingly combative in attacking his criminal and economic record.
“Trump was a disaster for Nevada’s economy. Now he’s back,” reads the billboard — which makes no explicit mention of President Joe Biden. “A convicted white-collar crook. Coddling billionaires, leaving workers behind.”
In a statement, Stephanie Justice, a DNC spokesperson, sought to draw a line between Trump’s criminal conviction in his hush-money trial and what she described as his exploitation of Nevada’s working class to benefit the wealthy.
“After promising to take care of Nevada’s middle class, he implemented a tax scam that made the ultra-wealthy and corporations wealthier off the backs of working families, repeatedly attacked unions, and sat back as Nevada bled tens of thousands of jobs,” she said.
The juxtaposition of Trump’s crimes, for which he was found guilty in a Manhattan court last week, and his economic policies comes as Democrats have been divided over how to respond to the historic verdict against the former president.
The DNC originally declined to issue a statement at all, deferring comment to Biden’s reelect committee, which downplayed the verdict's political significance. Trump, meanwhile, raked in tens of millions of dollars from quick fundraising off of the outcome.
In recent days, however, Democratic rhetoric on Trump’s conviction has intensified as some campaign groups have sought to use the verdict to highlight other matters on voters’ minds. The DNC began another billboard campaign in Arizona on Thursday ahead of a Trump town hall in Phoenix, attacking Trump for viewing himself as “above the rule of law” and casting him as a threat to democracy, the economy and safety.
That billboard said: “If Trump, now a convicted felon, wins in November, he pledges to be a dictator on ‘day one’ while pushing to implement his agenda of revenge and retribution, threatening political violence while attacking Arizonans’ reproductive rights and democracy.”
Nevada has one of the highest rates of unemployment in the nation and is dealing with persistent inflation and low wage growth. Biden, who polls show is trailing by around 5 points in Nevada, recently targeted the Silver State’s high share of union members and pointed to its strong rate of job creation.
“Ahead of his first campaign stop as a convicted felon, Trump is facing decisive opposition from union labor,” a campaign staffer for Biden’s Nevada operation posted on X on Friday, repeating the new “white-collar crook” descriptor.
Trump has encouraged Nevadans to vote in the state's primaries for Congress and the state legislature on Tuesday, with many Republicans pitching themselves as strong supporters of the former president. But Trump has yet to make an endorsement in the Republican primary for the state's marquee Senate race, where the party's nomination is centering on two leading candidates: Sam Brown, a decorated Army veteran who is ahead in the polls, and Jeff Gunter, a former ambassador to Iceland.
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