WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign is ramping up a Facebook ad blitz against efforts to impeach him, buying more ads on the topic in recent weeks than all the Democratic White House candidates combined.

The contrast between the president and the Democratic field is a sign that Trump is betting the Democratic-led congressional impeachment inquiry, which entered a new phase on Wednesday with public hearings, could help him win the November 2020 election. Public opinion polls show support for impeachment is concentrated among Democrats.

Last Friday alone, the president sent out more than 400 Facebook ads asking for donations that would be rewarded with a personalized “Impeachment Defense Membership Card.”

A screenshot from Facebook's ad library shows an ad run by U.S. President Donald Trump's re-election campaign in November 2019, inviting viewers to make a donation and receive an “impeachment defense member” card. The Trump Make America Great Again Committee/Facebook via REUTERS

The ads are designed to energize Trump’s supporters, encouraging them to turn out to vote in next year’s election, and help him win over independents skeptical of the impeachment process, said Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist.

“The Democrats are fired up no matter what. He has to make sure that he’s able to match and exceed the Democrats’ intensity,” said O’Connell, who worked on the 2008 presidential campaign of Republican John McCain.

Trump also launched new ads on Wednesday calling the hearings “fake” and a “scam,” while separately asking supporters via email to donate money to help him fight impeachment.

The U.S. House of Representatives inquiry focuses on a July 25 telephone call in which Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading contender in the Democratic race for the right to challenge Trump in 2020, and Biden’s son Hunter, who had served as a director for Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

Trump made his request after withholding $391 million in security aid approved by Congress to help fight Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.

FILE PHOTO: The committee room in the Longworth House Office Building where the first public hearings in the impeachment inquiry against U.S. President Donald Trump are scheduled to take place is shown on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., November 6, 2019. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

The president has denied any wrongdoing.

The Democratic candidates typically combine to run more ads than the president every day. But Trump’s campaign and backers pumped out more than 2,900 Facebook ads in the two weeks through last Friday that mention “impeach” or “impeachment,” according to a Reuters analysis of Facebook ad data.

The 15 Democratic candidates running new ads in the same period had just more than 200 mentioning impeachment, according to the data, which was gathered by computer scientists at the Tandon School of Engineering at New York University. tmsnrt.rs/2pekL1J

‘FIGHT OF OUR LIVES’

The Trump campaign declined to comment specifically on the ads, but communications director Tim Murtaugh said the impeachment proceedings were getting Trump supporters “more fired up.”

“We are in the fight of our lives right now,” the text of one of the ads said. “The President is counting on YOU to be there with him on the front lines of this nasty impeachment battle.”

A screenshot from Facebook's ad library shows an ad run by U.S. President Donald Trump's re-election campaign in November 2019. The Trump Make America Great Again Committee/Facebook via REUTERS

Biden has called for Trump’s impeachment in speeches and has run a few dozen ads in recent weeks inviting viewers to respond to the question: “Should Trump be impeached?”

His ads have focused more on attacking Trump over past incendiary remarks, including the president’s comment in 2017 that there were “very fine people on both sides” at a rally by white nationalists in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a self-described neo-Nazi drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing a woman.

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, another leading Democratic contender, has called for Trump’s impeachment in Facebook ads. But her ads in recent weeks have focused more on her plans for universal health insurance and improving access to higher education.

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