With only four days left before Election Day, The Lincoln Project, a group of Republicans dedicated to voting Trump out of office, has doubled down on their controversial billboard signs featuring Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner.
On Friday, October 30, Ron Steslow, one of the co-founders of The Lincoln Project, revealed they sent the billboard ads on a boat to Mar-a-Lago.
He tweeted, “@jaredkushner and @IvankaTrump demanded we take the billboards down. They threatened to sue @ProjectLincoln for ‘enormous’ sums. In honor of their demands, here is the boat we hired, on its way to Mar-A-Lago. And our digital billboard truck circling Trump Tower in NYC.”
Sending the billboards on a boat to Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s famous 128-room mansion resort in Palm Beach, Florida, looked to be in retaliation for the president’s daughter and son-in-law threatening legal action against The Lincoln Project.
On October 23, attorney Marc E. Kasowitz wrote a letter on behalf of Trump and Kushner claiming that the billboards were “false, malicious and defamatory.”
Kushner’s billboard shows him smiling next to a line of body bags and features a quote attributed to him by Vanity Fair in which he said that New Yorkers “are going to suffer [during the pandemic] and that’s their problem.”
Trump’s billboard features a picture of the president’s eldest daughter alongside the coronavirus death toll numbers in New York and nationwide. Her hand gesture in the billboard’s photo was pulled from a picture Trump tweeted back in July, in which she promoted Goya black beans.
Kasowitz’s letter to The Lincoln Project said, “Of course, Mr. Kushner never made any such statement, Ms. Trump never made any such gesture, and the Lincoln Project’s representations that they did are an outrageous and shameful libel. If these billboard ads are not immediately removed, we will sue you for what will doubtless be enormous compensatory and punitive damages.”
The billboards in Times Square will remain up until at least November 5, according to The New York Times.
The Lincoln Project Tweeted Out Their Lawyer’s Scathing Response to Jared & Ivanka’s Threat to Sue
Before The Lincoln Project sent a billboard boat to Mar-a-Lago, they responded to Kasowitz with a letter from their own lawyer, Matthew Sanderson, which read in part, “Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump are public officials. They have been public officials since President Trump, in a gross act of nepotism, awarded Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump senior White House positions in 2017.”
The Lincoln Project also released a statement on Twitter:
While we truly enjoy living rent free in their heads, their empty threats will not be taken any more seriously than we take Ivanka and Jared.
It is unsurprising that an administration that has never had any regard or understanding of our Constitution would try to trample on our first amendment rights, but we fully intend on making this civics lesson as painful as possible. Jared and Ivanka have always been entitled, out-of-touch bullies who have never given the slightest indication they have any regard for the American people. We plan on showing them the same level of respect.
The billboards will stay up. We consider it important that in Times Square, the crossroads of the world, people are continuously reminded of the cruelty, audacity, and staggering lack of empathy the Trumps and the Kushners have displayed towards the American people.
Numerous Celebrities Helped Make the Billboards Go Viral on Twitter
While the billboards are hard to miss while walking through Times Square in Manhattan, numerous celebrities retweeted the pictures for the millions who couldn’t walk by them in New York City.
Barbra Streisand retweeted the photos and said, “After Jared Kushner said that New Yorkers deserve to suffer extensive deaths and sickness of coronavirus because the governor did not beg Trump sufficiently for help, it is laughable that he wants to sue for having his words plastered across Times Square.
READ NEXT: Rapper Lil Wayne’s Trump Endorsement Sparks Controversy on Twitter