The Anti-Trump Ad Onslaught Is Coming

Presumptive Republican frontrunner Donald Trump is, by all accounts, staring down a pretty rough ride in the next few months. Already facing a reportedly cash-strapped general election campaign and carrying all the political liabilities of his bruising, scorched-earth trek through the Republican primary process, it now sounds like his rival for the presidency is planning to make those liabilities hurt. According to Politico, the Clinton campaign began hitting Donald Trump with a flood of negative ads in key battleground states this week, a fact which Team Trump seems rather concerned about.

The plan, as Politico's Gabriel Debenedetti detailed on Wednesday, was for Thursday to kick off a slew of new anti-Trump attack ads in a host of swing states, including Virginia, Florida, Nevada, Colorado, New Hampshire, Iowa, North Carolina, and of course, the ever-crucial state of Ohio. The surge will reportedly supplement ads already released by the Clinton-loyal Super PAC, Priorities USA.

Early on Saturday, ostensibly spurred by this new advertising effort, the Trump campaign sent out emails to supporters setting a $100,000 "emergency" fundraising goal for the day, cautioning that "Crooked Hillary is about to invade your TV with ads attacking Mr. Trump," and requesting money to help get it's own ads on the air.

It could end up being revelatory how exactly the Trump campaign handles this kind of all-out advertising barrage, especially given the worrisome reports that have followed them , from the primary clear through to now ― that it's poorly funded, under-staffed, less organized and less prepared for the brutal realities of a general election contest than a traditional presidential run.

The concerns obviously run deep, much deeper even than those just of the Trump campaign itself. In fact, there are reportedly some members of the Republican nominating process who're still trying to overthrow Trump at the Republican National Convention, amid concerns that nominating him would be effectively ceding the race to Clinton, and could end up obliterating Republicans in down-ballot races, too.

And frankly, however desperate it might look, and however much it would inflame the millions of Americans who supported Trump throughout the primary, it's hard to argue that they might be on to something. According to RealClearPolitics' polling average, Trump is already trailing Clinton by nearly six points nationally, and that's before he;s absorbed the litany of criticisms and attacks that's surely coming in the summer. Simply put, Trump doesn't need any more bad news, and a multi-million dollar ad buy by the Clinton camp is practically the definition of "bad news" for him.