New Video Clarifies ‘Phony Phil’s’ Claims

The Tennessee Republican Party is having fun with “Phony Phil” Bredesen’s latest campaign ad filmed outside his grandmother’s American-flag-clad house in New York state.

“Phil Bredesen’s most recent campaign ad left out some crucial details, so we decided to make our own video that gives Tennesseans some helpful context,” the Tennessee GOP said in a press release.

The GOP took the U.S. Senate candidate’s campaign video and inserted comments clarifying the Harvard graduate’s claims to be a regular guy who wants to stop Washington, D.C., Democrats from telling others how to live. The GOP added comical music and sound effects to complete the experience.

Watch the GOP’s video is available to watch:

Scott Golden, Tennessee Republican Party Chairman, said, “The lack of self-awareness in Phony Phil’s new ad is truly remarkable. Phil complains about ‘educated, secure people who love telling the rest of us how to live’, but he’s only describing himself: a Harvard-educated, limousine liberal who owns a private plane and describes himself as ‘more sophisticated’ than regular Tennesseans. Phony Phil doesn’t pass the smell test, and Tennesseans will let him know this November.”

The Chattanooga Times Free Press filmed a video interview with Bredesen in which he said he is more “sophisticated” than rural voters. The Tennessee Star reported on the interview.

A clip from the interview shows Bredesen saying that when he attends family reunions in his native Upstate New York, he experiences “a culture that is different.” The Harvard graduate estimates 70 percent of his extended family voted for Trump but “are not crazy or anything.”

Around the 1 minute mark, he says he has one foot planted in that world and one foot in a “more sophisticated” world.

An earlier Bredesen campaign ad took selected clips of Republicans who do not support him saying good things about him, The Tennessee Star reported last week.

In a Chattanooga Times Free Press column, Clint Cooper called out Bredesen for using what he described as “deceptive advertising” in a new commercial.

“On Monday, the campaign, which had previously employed well-done ads in which the former Tennessee governor talked moderately and said earnestly he was ‘applying for the job,’ released a commercial in which some Republicans who don’t support him are shown saying kind things about him,” Cooper wrote.

Golden told The Tennessee Star, “Phony Phil Bredesen can pretend to be Republican-lite all he wants, but he can’t escape his liberal record. Phil donated $33,400 to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.”

“Phil admitted he’s Chuck Schumer’s handpicked candidate. Phil’s campaign called Trump voters ‘idiots.’ And now he’s relying on Bernie Sanders supporters to raise him money. Tennesseans aren’t fooled by Phil’s attempts to manipulate Republicans’ words to serve his own political purposes.”

If Bredesen loses the election, he will not be out living on the streets.

The former Tennessee governor who hopes to flip retiring Bob Corker’s seat from Republican to Democrat shares one thing besides friendship with the former Chattanooga mayor: they’re both extremely rich, The Tennessee Star reported earlier this month.

Bredesen has reported assets between $88.9 million and $358 million, The Washington Free Beacon said.

In replacing Corker, Bredesen would also become one of the richest members of Congress. Public records show he is the owner of five homes—two homes in Nashville, two lakefront properties in upstate New York, and a five-bedroom home in Jackson, Wyoming.

Nor is traveling an issue for Bredesen: He is one of the registered owners of an Embraer Phenom 300 private jet, according to Federal Aviation Association records. The Embraer Phenom 300 sells for $10 million, according to CNBC.

And yet Bredesen says the Democratic Party is  “too elitist and too distant from the concerns of the very down to Earth people that have always been the base of the party.”