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In 1964, the Johnson campaign aired what would become one of America’s most infamous attack ads. Now, it’s being repurposed against James Talarico and trans kids<\/span>Library of Congress<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n In 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson\u2019s <\/span>campaign ran a terrifying 60-second advertisement<\/a>. It opens with a three-year-old girl in a field, pulling petals off a daisy while counting to ten. Then, a man\u2019s voice begins a countdown, and a nuclear explosion fills the screen.<\/p>\n The advertisement only aired once, but roughly 100 million people saw it. The message was clear: Johnson\u2019s opponent, Barry Goldwater, was a warmonger who would put American children in danger and bring nuclear armageddon. Johnson won in a landslide, and the daisy video became America\u2019s most infamous attack ad. <\/p>\n Now, a Super PAC acting on behalf of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton\u2019s Senatorial campaign is using an AI-generated, Frankensteined version of Johnson\u2019s video to push a different message. <\/p>\n In this version, instead of being wiped out by a nuclear bomb, the daisy girl\u2014resurrected via generative AI\u2014lies on an operating table in front of an AI-generated version of Texas Representative James Talarico<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cShe dreams of growing up, falling in love, becoming a mother,\u201d a narrator intones. \u201cThe trans industry preys on confused children. Irreversible puberty blockers. Cross-sex hormones. Sex-change surgeries.\u201d The Talarico campaign has stated that \u201cJames does not support gender reassignment surgery for minors,\u201d and that \u201cthis AI deep fake ad is flat out lying.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s not the only AI advertisement Paxton\u2019s allies have produced this cycle, nor is it the first designed to attack Talarico\u2019s support for transgender youth<\/a>. Another advertisement, which ran in June, shows an AI-generated James Talarico dancing in a dress, singing a parody version of \u201cMy Favorite Things\u201d from \u201cThe Sound of Music\u201d reworked to be about giving girls hormones \u201ctil they grow mustaches.\u201d Paxton has built his brand on ridiculing trans youth and making it as difficult as possible for them to access medical care. In May, he even took time during his runoff victory speech<\/a> to call Talarico\u2019s defense of trans youth \u201cweird.\u201d<\/p>\n This $10 million ad buy, though, might be the Paxton campaign\u2019s most egregious attack yet. The ad was developed by the American Principles Project<\/a>, one of the earliest groups to push anti-trans laws. Their ultimate goal, as my colleague Madison Pauly has reported<\/a>, is to go beyond banning gender-affirming care for children and outlaw medical care for trans people of all ages<\/a>. As the group\u2019s president, Terry Schilling,\u00a0admitted<\/a>\u00a0last year, he and his allies are starting with children because that\u2019s \u201cwhere the consensus is.\u201d<\/p>\n The original \u201cdaisy girl\u201d ad was effective because it was able to make people afraid. The campaign spot, which aired in the middle of a family television program, pushed parents to vote in the way they believed would protect their children from an unthinkable fate. Schilling and his allies hope to leverage parents\u2019 fears of a supposed predatory medical establishment to push Paxton to victory. <\/p>\n But if previous attempts to remix the daisy video are anything to go by, the American Principles Project may not succeed. Bob Dole, in 1996, aired a version of the daisy video that concerned itself with teenage drug use. Audiences didn\u2019t find that particularly compelling, and Dole lost. The Hillary Clinton campaign, in 2016, tracked down the actress who starred in the original video to shoot an ad<\/a> for her presidential bid. Clinton lost, too. An atom bomb is terrifying because it is real, but an AI-generated three-year-old on an operating table is a manufactured threat. <\/p>\n