A Democratic Super PAC Is Running Ads Asking the Porn Industry for Dirt on Donald Trump Now

Welcome to the Resistance, where the Democratic super PAC American Bridge—the opposition research arm of David Brock’s network of political groups—is spending money on a new ad campaign to solicit dirt about Donald Trump during the Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas.

As reported by BuzzFeed on Friday, the ads will feature photos of Donald Trump with the adult film actress Stephanie Clifford (better known by her stage name, Stormy Daniels) with the question: “Have you ‘hung out’ with Donald Trump? Wanna chat?” along with the email address of its tip line.

Another ad includes the infamous photo of Trump in a bathrobe:

American Bridge president Bradley Beychok tweeted the BuzzFeed story with the caption “here fishy fishy,” making it known that the super PAC is casting its proverbial line:

The underlying message here seems to be that porn actresses should be used like literal bait in pursuit of a higher goal—sniffing out the next Trump sex scandal. After the news broke that Trump allegedly had an affair with Daniels, and his lawyer Michael Cohen arranged a $130,000 hush money payment to keep her quiet, the Resistance has responded by gleefully calling out conservatives’ moral hypocrisy. But as Arabelle Raphael recently pointed out in the Outline, there was “an aura of mocking fascination around the whole thing,” stemming from the notion that sex workers are not to be treated like women.

You’d think there would be more fruitful things for a Democratic super PAC to spend its money on in 2018, with midterms elections coming up in November, even in the realm of opposition research. (American Bridge has raised $9.5 million already this cycle.) But these tactics are also par for the course from Brock, who made his name in the ‘90s as a then-conservative operative raking up sexual gossip against Bill Clinton, the new president. The question is when wealthy Democratic donors will finally put an end to it.