Inside a Harris Ad in Which Ex-Trump Aides Blast Him as Unfit for Office

Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign has spent more than $2.6 million running this 60-second ad across the country since Oct. 3, including six-figure buys in six of the seven battleground states, according to AdImpact.

Here’s a look at the ad, its accuracy and its major takeaway.

On the Screen

The ad opens with ominous music and a shaky-camera-style montage of scenes from former President Donald J. Trump’s past. He is seen standing outside the New York City courtroom where this year he was found to have committed civil fraud.

A timeline scrolls back to images of Mr. Trump as a candidate for president in 2016, and then a photo shows him in the Situation Room in 2019 — on the day that U.S. soldiers raided an ISIS leader’s compound in Syria — flanked by three top officials at the time: Vice President Mike Pence, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Over that image, a white-lettered warning materializes: “Trump is not fit to be president again.”

The ad goes on to toggle between photos of Mr. Trump alongside those men, as well as his former national security adviser, John R. Bolton, while they served together, and clips of the four former officials in recent television interviews delivering scathing criticism of Mr. Trump and dire warnings about the risks if he is elected to another term.

Subtitles drive those messages home. “I CANNOT in good conscience ENDORSE DONALD TRUMP this year,” Mr. Pence is seen saying on the CBS show “Face the Nation.” “The only thing he cares about IS DONALD TRUMP,” Mr. Bolton says on CNN.

The Script

Narrator

“In 2016, Donald Trump said he would choose only the best people to work in his White House. Now, those people have a warning for America: Trump is not fit to be president again. Here’s his vice president.”

Pence

“Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.”

pence

“I cannot in good conscience endorse Donald Trump this year.”

Narrator

“His defense secretary.”

Jake Tapper

“Do you think Trump can be trusted with the nation’s secrets ever again?”

ESPER

“No. I mean, it’s just irresponsible action that places our service members at risk, places our nation’s security at risk.”

Narrator

“His national security adviser.”

Bolton

“Donald Trump will cause a lot of damage.”

Bolton

“The only thing he cares about is Donald Trump.”

Narrator

“And the nation’s former highest-ranking military officer.”

Milley

“We don’t take an oath to a king, or a queen, or a tyrant, or a dictator. And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator.”

Narrator

“Take it from the people who knew him best: Donald Trump is too big a risk for America.”

Accuracy

The ad largely consists of remarks made on television. It makes no verifiable claims.

The Takeaway

The ad delivers one of the strongest attacks that Ms. Harris has leveled so far by using the words of the men on whom Mr. Trump relied to defend the nation to disqualify him from serving another term as commander in chief.

Its jittery aesthetic appears designed to underscore Ms. Harris’s argument that a second Trump term would be dark, chaotic and unsafe. It seeks to reach voters who would be unlikely to accept Ms. Harris’s word about Mr. Trump’s fitness for office but might heed the warnings of his own former national security aides.