Lincoln Project rejects Ivanka-Kushner threat over Times Square billboards

New York: The Lincoln Project “will not be intimidated by empty bluster”, a lawyer for the group responded over the weekend, in response to a threat from an attorney for Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, both advisers to President Trump, over two billboards put up in Times Square.

The New York City billboards show the president’s daughter and her husband displaying apparent indifference to public suffering under Covid-19.

Kushner is shown next to the quote “[New Yorkers] are going to suffer and that’s their problem”, above a line of body bags. Ivanka is shown gesturing, with a smile, to statistics for how many New Yorkers and Americans as a whole have died.

According to Johns Hopkins University, more than 8.5m coronavirus cases have been recorded across the US and more than 224,000 have died. Case numbers are at record daily levels and one study has predicted 500,000 deaths by February. New York was hit hard at the pandemic’s outset.

The Lincoln Project is a group of former Republican consultants who oppose Trump’s re-election.

Last Friday, Marc Kasowitz, an attorney for the President, wrote to the Lincoln Project, demanding the “false, malicious and defamatory” ads be removed, or “we will sue you.”

The Lincoln Project responded that they would not remove the billboards, citing first amendment rights of free speech and the “reckless mismanagement of Covid-19” by the Trump White House.

Image courtesy of (Photo courtesy Twitter)

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