Trump, Harris Ads Make Clear They Won't Be Cutting Government

The 2024 presidential election campaign is mercifully in its final weeks, and the two major party candidates are busy making their closing arguments to voters. Judging by the messaging that their aligned PACs are prioritizing, neither former President Donald Trump nor Vice President Kamala Harris has any interest in winning over small government supporters.

Yesterday, Axios reporter Alex Thompson posted a helpful thread of eight ads that pro-Trump and Harris PACs have spent the most money on in the last three weeks.

A ???? on the most aired ads in the past 3 weeks as the campaigns make their closing arguments.

The ad w/ the most money behind it comes from the pro-Harris Super PAC Future Forward.

“I work hard. I scrape to get by. Donald Trump wants to give tax breaks to billionaires but… pic.twitter.com/CUCmBdVB1S

— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) October 22, 2024

The pro-Harris ads all contrast a clip of Trump telling a room of donors that “you’re rich as hell” and “we’re gonna give you tax cuts” with everyday people saying they’re not rich as hell and are therefore voting for Harris’ agenda of price controls, continued entitlement spending, and upper-class tax increases.

The pro-Trump ads meanwhile tar Harris as a radical leftist who secured sex change operations for incarcerated murderers, opened the border to illegal immigration, and cackled along to ruinously inflationary Bidenomics while the globe descended into chaos.

If you can’t tell from that description, the pro-Harris ads are more upbeat, more targeted at moderate voters, and lighter on substance. The pro-Trump ads are much darker in tone, more aggressive in messaging, and more specific in their attacks on Harris.

None break new ground or include any surprise themes. Both sides are attempting to make what is essentially a big government populist case against the other.

The pro-Harris side paints Trump as corrupt. The pro-Trump side paints Harris as dangerous. But both are still explicitly presenting an every day “us” versus an evil “them.”

“Donald Trump wants to give tax breaks to billionaires but Kamala Harris has plans to help us,” says a Florida woman in a pro-Harris ad.

“Kamala’s agenda is they/them, not you,” says the narrator in a pro-Trump ad while images of trans inmates flash across the screen.

Both sets of ads do call for tax cuts, but at no point is that connected to the idea of the government spending less or doing less. Rather, tax cuts are presented as a benefit that each candidate will bestow on working and middle-class people. (The pro-Harris ads also call for tax increases on the rich.)

Plausibly small government populist messages—say about getting Washington off your back, out of your bedroom, or out of your way as you start a business—are nowhere to be found.

The ideas of “freedom” or “liberty” don’t get a mention, save for one negative use in a pro-Trump ad about how Harris let “killers go free.”

It may well make practical and political sense for both campaigns to abandon any pitch to voters who care about such parochial issues as shrinking the leviathan state. Certainly, neither candidate can credibly claim to be a champion of that cause at this point.

But if the big money behind the Harris and Trump campaigns doesn’t care about winning over libertarian-leaning voters, libertarian-leaning voters can’t be blamed for not being all that invested in who wins the White House come November.

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