President Biden’s campaign on Monday began its most aggressive effort to brand former President Donald J. Trump a felon, with the introduction of a new television advertisement that focuses on the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s criminal conviction.
The campaign said the ad would be part of a $50 million investment in battleground states in June. A growing number of Democrats have been urging the president to become more aggressive in branding Mr. Trump with his criminal conviction.
“We see Donald Trump for who he is,” the ad’s narrator states. “He’s been convicted of 34 felonies, found liable for sexual assault and he committed financial fraud.”
The ad concludes by framing the election with the choice the Biden campaign aims to sear into the memory of voters who may be on the fence about casting a ballot for Mr. Biden, whose approval ratings last week reached the lowest point in his presidency.
“This election is between a convicted criminal who is only out for himself and a president who is fighting for your family,” the ad’s narrator states.
Since Mr. Trump’s trial concluded last month, the president’s Democratic allies have been engaged in a broad discussion about how to use the New York jury’s decision in the campaign.
While Mr. Trump regularly bemoans his conviction in rally speeches and on his social media platform, Mr. Biden has for the most part avoided the subject, aside from an offhand remark at a Connecticut fund-raiser this month. He has not attacked Mr. Trump for his criminal conviction in front of television cameras, though surrogates such as Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois have shown themselves to be far less reluctant to do so.
In just 10 days, Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump will meet for their first debate of the campaign, an event the president’s team hopes will help cement with voters the idea that the 2024 election is a choice between Mr. Biden and his predecessor.
“Trump approaches the first debate as a convicted felon who continues to prove that he will do anything and harm anyone if it means more power and vengeance for Donald Trump,” said Michael Tyler, a Biden campaign spokesman. “His entire campaign is an exercise in revenge and retribution.”
A Trump campaign spokesman said the Biden campaign’s new ads demonstrated that Mr. Biden had led a coordinated attack against Mr. Trump — a theory for which there is no evidence. In addition to the New York case, Mr. Trump has been indicted in two separate federal cases and one case in Georgia.
“Joe Biden and his campaign are stupid enough to highlight how they have weaponized the justice system to attack the leading presidential candidate and their opponent in order to interfere in the election,” said Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman. “The Biden campaign has spent tens of millions of dollars on advertising, yet their numbers have not changed.”
Mr. Trump has held narrow leads over Mr. Biden in most public polling for months, though interviews with nearly 2,000 voters who took polls in recent months from The New York Times and Siena College found a slight shift to Mr. Biden from Mr. Trump after the former president’s conviction.
