“The Radical Left is upset with the fact that I am taking Ads, which I consider to be a positive promotion for our Great U.S.A., and paying for them with U.S.A. money,” said President Donald Trump in a Monday Truth Social post. “This is a rather standard thing to do but, rather than doing that, although nothing will make them happy, I have decided to do the Patriotic Ads, among others, and pay for them myself, and with money I raised for MAGA, Inc.”
Politico reported that Trump has received “bipartisan criticism,” for the taxpayer-funded spots. One unnamed sourced described as a GOP political operative said: “I love my POTUS but he couldn’t be more out of touch,” in a text to the outlet, adding “his term has been so awful that we have to save candidates in Kansas and Alabama but we’re gonna admit to wasting tax dollars on ads hyping him up.”
According to a Sept. 29 press release from House Appropriations Committee Democrats, the Trump administration used funding allocated for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in Republicans’ “One Big Beautiful Bill” to pay for the advertisements.
“After gutting $1 trillion from Medicaid, stripping health care coverage from millions of Americans, giving the very richest Americans and large corporations massive tax breaks, adding more than $4 trillion to the deficit, and more than quadrupling funding for mass deportations, it turns out the Trump administration used Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill to pay for President Trump’s political ads,” said Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and House Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee Ranking Member Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) in a statement.
Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), ranking member of the Committee on Homeland Security, led Committee Democrats to send a letter to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin demanding answers about the ads. A Sept. 30 press release from the Committee on Homeland Security Democrats said these ads follow more than $200 million in DHS advertising spending under former Secretary Kristi Noem.
“This disturbing pattern of redirecting congressionally appropriated funding to advantage one political party must cease immediately.” the committee members wrote to Mullin. “As Secretary, it is your responsibility to ensure that DHS uses its funding in compliance with Federal law prohibiting the use of funds for political propaganda. Homeland Security Committee Democrats demand answers as to how this funding was approved and how it comports with Federal law.”
Before those statements were released, the Trump administration defended the ads in a Sept. 25 press release. It argued that they were “very clearly not campaign ads,” and compared the spots to TV campaigns about programs and policies from the administrations of former presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
However, experts cited by FactCheck.org from the Annenberg Policy Center said the Trump administration’s ads are closer to political messages intended to influence elections and therefore might violate U.S. laws. Recent polling has shown that Trump’s approval rating is at a career low and predictions provided by 270 to Win Tuesday indicated that Democrats could flip both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections next month.
FactCheck.org highlighted that one of three ads that started airing on or after Sept. 23 was “almost identical to an ad from Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.”
Richard Painter, a corporate law professor and former White House ethics lawyer for George W. Bush, told FactCheck.org in an interview that he didn’t see “any comparison at all” between the Trump ads and the TV campaigns the Trump administration cited from previous presidential administrations. He said the Trump White House ads are “clearly propaganda.”
Additionally, John G. Geer, a professor of political science at Vanderbilt University and author of “In Defense of Negativity: Attack Ads in Presidential Campaigns,” told FactCheck.org that he didn’t “buy the argument” that the ads from the Trump administration were similar to the messages from former presidents. According to Politico, MAGA Inc. did not immediately respond to request for comment about the ads.
