The former president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., cut two ads earlier this month urging Republican voters in Pennsylvania to vote by mail this election cycle, in another sign that high-profile figures close to the former president are encouraging battleground-state voters to embrace the type of voting their own 2024 nominee has spent years railing against.
“If you’re working a double shift or family responsibilities prevent you from voting on Election Day, Joe Biden wins. Pennsylvania, I need you to join the mail-in voting list today,” Don Jr. says in one of the 15-second spots paid for by the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) to benefit Skipthelinepa.vote, a resource for Pennsylvania Republicans who want updates and information regarding mail-in voting. As of this morning, both ads have more than 350,000 views on Youtube since their launch three weeks ago.
Just $100,000 was spent on these digital and peer-to-peer Don Jr. ads, a source familiar with the effort tells National Review. That’s just a sliver of the eight-figure investment that three Republican political-action committees — the RSLC, Keystone Renewal (a pro–Dave McCormick super PAC), and the Sentinel Action Fund — have pledged to make in mail-in-ballot efforts in Pennsylvania this cycle.
“Our strategic investment will begin earlier than ever before, engaging voters and the grassroots from every corner of the Commonwealth upwards of 20 times over the course of the cycle through mail, digital ads, texting, phone calls, and door-to-door efforts,” RSLC president Dee Duncan wrote in a memo to interested parties earlier this year. “Significant voter contact will begin before the primary election and run through Election Day.”
A source close to the former president’s son maintains that Don Jr. plans to continue the effort in Pennsylvania and a number of other states through Election Day, as he did in 2020, when he recorded robocalls paid for by the Republican National Committee urging voters to vote by mail.
This month’s Don Jr. ads are also sign that forces aligned with McCormick — Pennsylvania Republicans’ 2024 Senate nominee who will face Democratic senator Bob Casey in November — are eager to compete with Democrats in early and absentee voting this cycle in Pennsylvania, a state Trump carried in 2016 but lost narrowly to President Joe Biden in 2020.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do but, you know, listen, politics is a team sport. My efforts are very much aligned with Trump’s team in terms of mail-in ballots,” McCormick said in a radio interview last week ahead of the state’s April 23 primary. “We’ve got to embrace mail-in ballots.”
Convincing a large chunk of Pennsylvania’s GOP electorate to cast votes before Election Day will be tough, given Republican voters are more accustomed to voting on Election Day and Trump has spent years insisting that mail-in voting is rigged. “If you have mail-in voting, you automatically have fraud,” Trump told Fox News host Laura Ingraham in February.
But the former president has changed his tune in recent weeks and is now encouraging voters to consider casting ballots early and by mail — even as he continues to insist on the campaign trail that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.
“ABSENTEE VOTING, EARLY VOTING, AND ELECTION DAY VOTING ARE ALL GOOD OPTIONS. REPUBLICANS MUST MAKE A PLAN, REGISTER, AND VOTE!” Trump wrote in an April 19 social-media post.