Obama's lawyers say a Trump super PAC is taking the former president's statements out of context in a Biden attack ad
- Lawyers representing former President Barack Obama sent a cease-and-desist letter on Wednesday to a super PAC supporting President Donald Trump's reelection.
- The letter says the super PAC has been airing a Joe Biden attack ad in South Carolina that take Obama's statements out of context to mislead black voters.
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Former President Barack Obama has mostly stayed out of the 2020 presidential race. But that changed when a super PAC supporting President Donald Trump started airing an attack ad against former Vice President Joe Biden in South Carolina.
Biden is hoping to win the state's Democratic primary on Saturday, a win he needs to pose a serious challenge to current frontrunner Bernie Sanders.
Obama's lawyers sent a cease-and-desist letter to The Committee to Defend the President on Wednesday, over a Biden attack ad the group has been airing in South Carolina. The letter says the ad takes a passage from Obama's 2015 memoir out of context and uses it to mislead black Americans.
Biden historically has strong support from the black community, which could give him an advantage in South Carolina.
Attacks on Biden's record with the black community
The ad makes several negative statements about Biden's relationship with the black community, while Obama is heard reading a passage from his book that deals with the history of African American support for the Democratic party.
"Joe Biden promised to help our community. It was a lie. Here is President Obama," the ad begins, before cutting to images of both Obama and Biden.
Obama is then heard reading the following passage from "Dreams from My Father": "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."
As Obama reads, several statements about Biden run across the screen, saying he "joined segregationists," "wrote the bill that disproportionately jailed African Americans," and "blamed African American parents for inequality."
'Clearly intended to mislead'
Obama's lawyers point out in their letter that the passage in question was actually not written from Obama's point of view, but of a black Chicago barber he knew in the mid-1990s.
"The passage was written more than 20 years ago and recounted a conversation with, and statements made by, a barber he called Smitty relating to Smitty's views on Chicago politics leading up to the election of Chicago's first black mayor, Harold Washington," Obama's lawyers wrote.
The lawyers went on to say that the ad was framed to sound like a "recent statement made by President Obama" and "clearly intended to mislead the target audience."
This framing is a violation of Obama's right to publicity and privacy, the lawyers argue, and must be immediately taken out of commission.
A 'despicable' ad
Ted Harvey, chairman of The Committee to Defend the President, told Politico that the passage from Obama's book is about "Democrats paying lip-service to the African-American community" and "applies perfectly to Joe Biden."
"It took President Trump to lower black unemployment and create jobs for the African-American community, in addition to passing criminal justice reform. Joe Biden, on the other hand, is simply giving lip-service for votes. That's the point President Obama made in his book, and we have every right to use his own words - in his own voice - in the political forum," he said.
Obama spokeswoman Katie Hill called the ad "despicable" in a statement to Politico, and added that it's "straight out of the Republican disinformation playbook."
"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 said.
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