White House airs more taxpayer-funded ads promoting Trump
The federal government has spent at least $1.7 million to air three different TV ads featuring President Donald Trump in recent days, according to an estimate from AdImpact, which tracks and analyzes political ad spending across television, digital and connected TV channels.
Critics say the ads could violate federal propaganda law. The White House has defended them as “public service announcements” and drawn comparisons to past examples of administrations that created PSA's to highlight new drug coverage under Medicare and signups for the Affordable Care Act exchanges.
The latest ad features Trump in monochrome, slowly walking down a hallway, describing “the final battle” against "the deep state,” “the globalists,” and “the sick political class that hates our country.”
The president is seen glaring directly at the camera as his voiceover vows to “rout the fake news media” and “liberate America from these villains once and for all."
The same video was shared by Trump three years ago when he was out of office and a declared candidate for president. The audio is taken from a Trump campaign stop in Michigan in June 2023.
A search of the monitoring service TVEyes indicates the ad ran at least twice over the weekend on the Fox Broadcasting Network -- once during college football on Saturday and again Sunday on "Fox News Sunday."
Another ad that aired Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" shows images of Trump at an event at Mt. Rushmore celebrating the country's 250th birthday in which he celebrates "only the beginning of the golden age of America."
An ad aired last week showed Trump boasting about his record and vowing the United States "will never be a communist country." That ad ran repeatedly during the week on conservative cable news channels Fox News and Newsmax across several media markets, according to AdImpact, a media buying and tracking firm.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee who would help lead congressional oversight efforts if his party retakes the House this fall, condemned the first ad after it aired last week.
"This may be felony criminal theft and conversion of government property for political campaign purposes," Raskin wrote. "It is a Hatch Act violation for any government employees who worked on it or used government resources to make it. It is blatantly unethical under numerous federal ethics provisions proscribing the use of government resources for political campaigns."
The Hatch Act restricts certain political activities by federal employees and by some state, Washington, D.C., and local government workers who are involved or work in federally funded programs.
Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan requested information on the first ad from White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, asking for details about how the ad was produced and the source of the federal funds used to air it.
Some Republicans have criticized the ads as well.
Brinker Harding, the Republican candidate in Nebraska's 2nd District, represented by retiring GOP Rep. Don Bacon, and won by Kamala Harris by five points in 2024, issued a statement condemning the taxpayer-funded ads.
"America is $40 trillion dollars in debt, and Nebraskans are struggling to make ends meet. We should be laser focused on spending the taxpayers’ hard earned dollars wisely, not funding political TV advertisements with their money," Harding posted on X.
Republican Sen. John Kennedy criticized the first ad after it aired, saying that public funds shouldn’t be used for such a cause.
"I don't think any public official, including President Trump or Kristi Noem or John Kennedy, should spend public money on private ads for themselves," he said. "Now, the White House sees it differently, but I think there ought to be a rule that you can't -- well, there probably is a rule -- you can't spend public money to promote yourself."
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung defended the administration’s ads on Sunday.
“Don’t let the Fake News get away with their lies about our epic Public Service Announcements that have been running on tv,” Cheung wrote.
Asked on Sunday about the ad that appears to be a copy of the 2024 campaign ad, the White House said in a statement that the “public service announcements are about reminding Americans to love their country and understand what makes it worth defending, at home, at our borders, and abroad.”
It added, “The ad is educational and unapologetically patriotic. We should be proud of our country.”
A White House official also defended the ads as “clearly not political” and asserted that Trump “is not on the ballot and the ads don’t have a call to action,” though Trump has repeatedly encouraged voters to “pretend” that he is on the ballot.
Cheung supplied a White House fact sheet on the ads highlighting President Woodrow Wilson’s efforts to bolster support for World War I in a campaign that used taxpayer funds to manipulate public opinion and shape news coverage.
While it birthed the classic American image of Uncle Sam saying “I Want You for U.S. Army,” much of the work of the Creel Committee remains infamous -- it has been said by historians to have inspired the propaganda efforts of Hitler’s government in Nazi Germany.
Related Topics
Popular Reads
ABC News Live