Former President Barack Obama is demanding that a pro-Trump group stop airing a "despicable" ad that uses a recording of Obama's voice to attack former Vice President Joe Biden — a rare intervention in a race that Obama has largely avoided so far.
"[T]his despicable ad is straight out of the Republican disinformation playbook, and it's clearly designed to suppress turnout among minority voters in South Carolina by taking President Obama's voice out of context and twisting his words to mislead viewers," Katie Hill, Obama's communications director, told NBC News.
The ad from the Committee to Defend the President, which aired on a South Carolina CBS affiliate multiple times before and during Tuesday night's debate, borrows from an Obama audiobook to suggest that the former president is criticizing his VP.
Obama's office said his lawyers would be sending the pro-Trump group — which according to its website started as the Stop Hillary PAC in 2013 — a cease-and-desist letter Wednesday.
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