Anti-Trump GOP group compares former president to Mussolini, Orbán in new ad campaign

An anti-Trump Republican group, The Republican Accountability PAC, released a six-figure campaign advertisement Friday set to air on cable that compares former President Trump to dictators and authoritarian leaders throughout history.

The ad, titled “Dictator Donald,” shows a December 2022 post from Trump where the former president said previous elections, particularly the 2020 presidential election, “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”

“Trump said he would terminate the Constitution so he could be president again,” the advertisement’s narrator said. “Do you know who also did that? [Benito] Mussolini, [Hugo] Chávez, [Augusto] Pinochet, all of them shelved their Constitutions to centralize power.”

The ad continues, saying Trump has plans to “purge” thousands of civil servants and replace them with loyalists.

“Authoritarian Viktor Orbán used the same tactic to dismantle Hungary’s democracy,” the narrator said.

The PAC’s political director, Gunner Ramer, said in a press release that not enough people, Republicans and Democrats alike, have internalized that Trump is headed toward a third nomination.

Ramer said the former president has become more conspiratorial, dictatorial and authoritarian and “has a real chance” at winning the 2024 election.

The advertisement begins by introducing Trump, saying “he was the 45th President of the United States. He caused an insurrection at the Capitol, and sorry to ruin your Christmas, but he’s running again.”

The one-minute ad will run on CNN and MNSBC nationally next week and in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin starting Friday, the PAC said. It will also air on TBS’s “A Christmas Story” marathon.

“Threats to democracy don’t take a break for the holidays. Donald Trump poses an existential crisis for our Constitutional order,” the PAC’s Director of Strategy John Conway said in an emailed statement. “Americans all across the country are hoping he will simply fade away. He isn’t.”

Conway said the group is “sounding the alarm” seeing as Trump will likely win the Republican nomination, warning of “the dangers posed by his increasingly dictatorial statements.”

“If we value our democracy, we must start working now to ensure that Donald Trump never holds political power again,” Conway said.