The $1.5m TV ad for Trump that was so bad it only ran once

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign reportedly spent $1.5 million on an “over-the-top” ad that ran just once because it was so bad.

And it’s claimed that Fox News host Sean Hannity allegedly helped create it - a claim he strongly denies.

The TV commercial ad Swamp Creature featured President Joe Biden as the “47-year swamp creature” with a “radical, socialist Green New Deal” who had “accomplished nothing” throughout his career, Talking Points Memo News (TMP) reported citing a report published by Punchbowl News.

The Punchbowl News report summarizes the ad’s backstory that is detailed in a forthcoming book about the Trump campaign authored by Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender.

Bender’s book “Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story Of How Trump Lost” is expected to hit shelves on August 10.

In his book, Bender reportedly reveals that staff members in the Trump campaign didn’t take the ad seriously and referred to it as the “Hannity ad” and “the one Hannity wrote,” according to Talking Points Memo News.

Trump’s campaign staffers “deemed it so useless that they limited it to exactly one show: Hannity,” Bender said in his book according to Punchbowl News.

“If Trump and Hannity watched the spot on television - and were satisfied enough to stop asking about the commercial - that seemed to be the best result of the ad. The cost of that investment: $1.5 million,” Bender added.

Officials in the Trump campaign thought the ad was “over-the-top,” according to Bender’s book, and considered it a waste of resources at a time when the campaign was spending a lot of cash, Raw Story reported.

The Punchbowl News report also quoted internal campaign emails that outlined the interactions among staff members who discussed ad-related matters.

Internal campaign emails reportedly referred to the ad as the “Hannity-written” spot. One email read that Hannity said this is “our best spot yet.”

“Inside the campaign, the spot was mocked mercilessly—mostly because of the dramatic, over-the-top language and a message that seemed to value quantity over quality,” the Journal reporter said in an extract mentioned in Punchbowl News report.

Hannity reportedly played a part in writing the ad scrip that ran once on his show, the Daily Beast reported.

But Hannity fired back denying that he wrote the script for the ad.

“The world knows that Sean Hannity supports Donald Trump. But my involvement specifically in the campaign — no. I was not involved that much. Anybody who said that is full of shit,” Hannity reportedly told Bender, according to the Punchbowl Report.

Punchbowl News reportedly mentioned that Bender has reached out to Trump twice in recent weeks at the Mar-a-Lago to speak about the book. It is unclear if Trump spoke to Bender about the campaign.