A Former Ambassador Just Spent $14,000 On Twitter Ads Bashing Obama

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, a Republican who said he is mulling a run for president in 2016, is a somewhat ubiquitous presence for politicos on Twitter.

The Washington Post documented in July how users who search for terms like "GOP" or even just "politics" on Twitter are greeted with ads from Bolton blasting President Barack Obama's foreign policy. For example, Business Insider just did a Twitter search for "Benghazi" and was presented with ads featuring surverys asking if Israel is justified in its conflict with Hamas and if we agree that "Iran is taking America to the cleaners."

These ads weren't free. According to the July federal campaign finance filings, Bolton's PAC spent $30,000 on online advertising and his super PAC spent another $20,000. Of that total, $14,353 went to Twitter ads, Bolton spokesman Garrett Marquis told Business Insider.

Overall, the amount Bolton has spent to promote himself on Twitter is a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the size of the committees, which together have close to $3 million cash on hand and are engaged in plenty of other political activity as well. Just last week his PAC launched a new online ad against Democratic Congresswoman Ann Kuster, who happens to hail from the key presidential primary state of New Hampshire.