July 24, 2020

The Trump Files: Donald and the Great Geico Boycott

“Something has to be done about this terrible, terrible Geico ad.”

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This post was originally published as part of “The Trump Files”—a collection of telling episodes, strange but true stories, and curious scenes from the life of our current President—on June 16, 2016.

The Donald knows a bad commercial when he sees one, and he won’t hesitate to strike back against them.

“Something has to be done about this terrible, terrible Geico ad,” he demanded in the March 21, 2011, edition of his “From The Desk of Donald Trump” YouTube series. At the time, Geico was running ads that featured basically nothing but a gravelly-voiced man in a suit asking rhetorical questions. (Look, they were weird. Just watch them yourselves.) Trump was incensed by the ads.

“It’s the worst I’ve ever seen on television,” he complained. “They’ve got this third-rate guy acting like he’s Humphrey Bogart, he’s driving people crazy…It’s a horrible commercial, it bothers everybody.”

But, as always, Trump had a plan to solve this. “We ought to boycott Geico,” he told his internet fans. “This is not Humphrey Bogart. If it were, Humphrey Bogart would not be a very famous guy.”

Read the rest of The Trump Files:

 

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

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