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Former President Barack Obama wants television stations in South Carolina to stop airing a political ad that used his voice. The ad is a smear campaign against Obama’s former Vice President Joe Biden took his voice out of context to mislead viewers into believing that Obama is against Biden.
“Joe Biden promised to help our community,” the ad said, Deadline reported. “It was a lie. Here’s President Obama.” The ad then used Obama’s audio clip taken from his 1995 memoir “Dreams from My Father.”
What followed next is Obama’s voice as he read a quotation from a barber about Chicago's first black mayor, Harold Washington, according to USA Today. “Plantation politics,” the barber said as read by Obama. “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.”
However, the ad led viewers to believe that Obama was talking about Biden. “Enough. Joe Biden won’t represent us, defend us, or help us. Don’t believe Biden’s empty promises,” the ad concluded.
The ad came from the Committee to Defend the President. It went on to air at the local CBS affiliates in South Carolina before the Democratic debate in Charleston.
“[T]his 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’s spokesperson, Katie Hill, said in a statement.
Obama want’s the ad taken down as well. “In the interest of truth in advertising, we are calling on TV stations to take this ad down and stop playing into the hands of bad actors who seek to sow division and confusion among the electorate,” Hill added.
While Obama has a lot of friends competing for the Democrat nomination, he prefers not to endorse anyone in particular “He believes that in order for Democrats to be successful this fall, voters must choose their nominee," Hill said.
