Trump personally helped orchestrate taxpayer-funded ads promoting himself and his policies, source says
By: Kristen Holmes/CNN
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
President Donald Trump has personally driven the controversial, taxpayer-funded video ads promoting himself and his administration’s policies, including helping select the imagery and videos used, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.
Two Trump advisers familiar with the ads said that they were being created in-house by the White House video team — which is part of the communications team, responsible for the administration’s public messaging.
Coming just over a month before the November midterms, the ads have generated bipartisan criticism over how the Trump administration is spending taxpayer dollars.
“It’s a great message. I like the message, but it shouldn’t be paid for with taxpayer dollars,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters in the Capitol on Monday.
GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas echoed that sentiment: “It’s not even a close question.”
The White House has broadly defended the ads, saying they are akin to public service announcements past administrations have put out about Medicare, Obamacare and Covid-19 vaccinations. Officials have insisted they “are very clearly not campaign ads.”
“These 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,” a White House spokesperson said Monday.
The White House has broadly defended the ads, saying they are akin to public service announcements past administrations have put out about Medicare, Obamacare and Covid-19 vaccinations. Officials have insisted they “are very clearly not campaign ads.”
“These 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,” a White House spokesperson said Monday.
But the imagery is undeniably meant to promote Trump, casting him as a warrior battling against existential threats. And the latest one appears nearly identical to a video Trump posted on Truth Social in January 2024, during his third presidential campaign.
That most recent ad shows Trump walking down a hall as audio plays of him saying “this is the final battle.”
“We will cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country. We will rout the fake news media, and we will liberate America from these villains once and for all,” Trump says in the ad , echoing comments he made during a Veterans Day speech in 2023.
The version on Truth Social has an additional six seconds that includes Trump’s campaign logo and a number to text. The text “Paid for by the US Government” is seen across the screen at the end of the new version of the ad.
Multiple members of Trump’s political operation said they were unaware that these ads were coming until they aired. But another source pushed back on the notion that anyone was kept in the dark — noting that the president had spoken about the ads to multiple aides and advisers and insisting that they were not being made in secret.
The latest ad — which aired during at least two NFL games on Sunday, during Fox’s broadcasts of the Washington Commanders-Seattle Seahawks matchup as well as the Carolina Panthers-Cleveland Browns game — is the third government-funded message in recent days to be captured by the media tracker AdImpact.
An ad that began airing Wednesday featured rapidly edited pictures and video of Trump over audio of him denouncing communism and socialism. Text on the screen touted his administration’s accomplishments, including “reigniting American manufacturing.”
“The ad is educational and unapologetically patriotic,” a White House spokesperson said in a statement. “We should be proud of our country.”
A second ad features video of Trump at Mount Rushmore as his voice is heard saying, “Never before has any nation celebrated so magnificent a triumph as this one.”
Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, said in a post on X that the ads “may be felony criminal theft and conversion of government property for political campaign purposes.”
And Raskin, who will gain congressional subpoena power in November if Democrats win the House, said it is not just Trump who might face inquiries over the messages. He said the creation of the ads was a “Hatch Act violation for any government employees who worked on it or used government resources to make it.”
“This is dumb, dumb, dumb beyond belief,” one former Trump campaign official told CNN. “These guys are all gonna get subpoenaed. It’s gonna be bad.”
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Uh, yeah.
No surprise there.
He's a psycho malignant narcissist.
Supercalifragilisticmalignantnarcisst-psycho-expailidocoius
it's been about 63 years, but I'm pretty sure you spelled that wrong ...
One can't expect him to be busted for this since he's "Above the law" as your "impartial" Scotus has ruled.
November 3rd can't come too soon. Trump's favorability numbers should be in the low 20s by then.
Basically, this is illegal six days a week and twice on Sundays.
Yeah... you got this, his news agency ban and the pocket resisions. I'm sure I forgot a dozen other things he's done this week. Trump's legacy will be one of corruption, not of having routed out communists.
Not in China, NK or Russia.
The preliminary reporting is that more than $1.7 million taxpayer dollars were spent for these ads. The final amount will probably be a whole lot more.
I'm really happy the money I pay for taxes went to this instead of unimportant stuff like Medicaid or feeding hungry children. MAGA! Winning!
the bag of shit averages $6+ million per day by grifting from the oval office, why can't he pay for his own ego stroking ads ...
You know as well as I do that the bag of shit never pays for anything.
his fucking kids will pay thru the nose later ...
I sure hope so
their accounts will be settled.
Unfortunately I am sure that they will all receive pardons before Trump is done.
Taking bets on how much Trump scammed off this as his fee for appearing in the videos.
I'm gonna say he gets at least 85%. Does he have a SAG card?
According to the interwebs... He used to, but resigned in Feb 2021 and SAG-AFTRA National Board voted to bar him from ever re-admitting to the union right after. He's still eligible for tens of thousands in union retirement pension for Home Alone 2 and The Apprentice.
I wouldn't bet against that.
Good question. Answer:
Just saw your comment after I posted mine.
Yours was better.
Yours discussed the union retirement pension. Interesting information.
And once again, all we can do is point and be outraged. The notion that my tax dollars are being used to campaign for the worst administration of the last century is nauseating. Like every other atrocity of this administration, nothing will be done about it and nobody will be held accountable. And then when democrats regain some power they will use this as precedent to do the same thing, and we can listen to outraged Republicans pretend they had nothing to do with it. Rinse and repeat.
New numbers being reported.
Russell Vought, one of Trump's primary neo-fascist operatives, should be impeached immediately.
“should” and “won’t” are interchangeable for today’s spineless Republican Party.
Update:
"God Made Trump" - Paid for by the U.S. Government!