A new Biden ad campaign juxtaposes images of the Ku Klux Klan with pictures of former President Donald Trump, the Jan. 6 incident and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"Again and again, I see competing forces in the battle for the soul of our nation, between those who want to pull America back to the past and those who want to move America into the future," President Joe Biden says as a KKK image, the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and then Trump are shown.
"The issue facing our nation isn't how old we are. It's how old are our ideas," Biden continues.
"Hate, anger, revenge, retribution are the oldest of ideas. I see a future where defending democracy — you don't diminish it. I see a future where we restore the right to choose and protect our freedoms where the middle class finally has a fair shot, and the wealthy have to pay their fair share in taxes."
The video has more than half a million views.
Biden visited Pennsylvania on Friday to kick off a tour of battleground states. His reelection team will spend $30 million on an ad buy as he moves quickly into the U.S. general election campaign after his feisty State of the Union speech Thursday.
Deputy Campaign Manager Rob Flaherty said the $30 million ad buy over the next six weeks is more than the Biden campaign spent in all of 2023. Flaherty said Biden's speech Thursday triggered the biggest day of fundraising yet for the incumbent Democrat. No figure was provided.
As of last month, the campaign had raised more than $42 million in January and had $130 million cash on hand for the general election battle.
The $30 million ad buy will be aimed at voters across a wide array of digital platforms, and some will be specifically aimed at key Democratic constituencies, including Hispanics, African Americans, and Asian Americans, Flaherty said.
Ads also will run on popular channels Comedy Central and ESPN.
Dan Sena, a Democratic consultant who led the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2018, told Politico that Biden "might have changed SOTU into the 'start of the uplift' with last night's speech."
"Democrats needed him to lay out the playbook for this election, in particular on the economy and immigration. We got the vision and contrast we need as the campaign season starts," Sena said.
The Trump campaign launched its own ad before Biden's State of the Union featuring video footage of the president stammering while speaking, and then stumbling while walking upstairs.
"We can all see Joe Biden's weakness," a narrator says while ominous music plays over the video. "If Biden wins, can he even survive till 2029?"
Biden, 81, is the oldest person ever elected as president.
Biden campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa slammed the ad, telling NBC News: "This is a sick and deranged stunt from a broke and struggling campaign that can't defend Trump's extreme Project 2025 agenda to ban abortion, separate families, raise costs on the middle class, repeal healthcare, and sow chaos and division."
"Trump tried this strategy four years ago and got his ass kicked by Joe Biden," Moussa said. "He should tune in tonight alongside tens of millions of Americans to see why President Biden will beat him again this November."
Taylor Budowich, the head of MAGA PAC, fired back, telling NBC: "Joe Biden is going to try to convince America to not believe their lyin' eyes. The reality is America is suffering, Joe Biden is weak, and we can't survive four more years."
Information from Reuters was used in this report.