The Taxpayer-Funded Trump Ads Epitomize Government Waste, Fraud, and Abuse

If you are an American taxpayer, then the administration is (illegally) spending your money on a propaganda campaign with the goal of making people feel better about Donald Trump.

And if you are a Republican ranting about government waste, fraud, and abuse in blue states but you are not alarmed by this, then you are a hypocrite.

At issue are two (so far) TV spots that are “paid for by the US government,” which means you.

The first started airing on Fox News earlier this week and, as we noted, would have felt over the top even from the likes of Leni Riefenstahl or whoever is in charge of North Korea’s propaganda.

It features a lot of Trump set against the music of the song “Love Me” by JMSN (which, it should almost go without saying, was used without permission).

The second is also all about the president and can also be seen on Fox.

The White House defended these ads as “public service announcements” and compared them to the TV campaigns of past administrations promoting and/or explaining things like the Medicare prescription drug benefit, Obamacare, and COVID vaccines.

However, the Trump propaganda spots don’t do any of those things (or anything even remotely like them).

To be fair, one could make the case that these ads do serve a public service in that they remind Americans of how little Trump or anybody in his administration cares about the country’s laws.

Because it seems pretty obvious that they are illegal.

Congressional Democrats certainly feel that way.

“This ad is a violation of section 718 of division E of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026, a longstanding general provision prohibiting any taxpayer funds from being used to produce government propaganda,” top Democratic appropriators from Senate and House said in a letter to White House chief of Staff Susie Wiles.

That section of the law states, “No part of any appropriation contained in the act or any other Act shall be used directly or indirectly, including through a private contractor, for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by Congress.”

The Democrats demand that the ads be taken down and that Wiles provide them with an accounting of all taxpayer funds used to create and air them.

Neither of those things is going to happen.

Instead, the White House stated that the fact that Trump isn’t on the ballot shows that they are not campaign ads, and that the spots simply are “a reminder for Americans to love their country and know why it’s worth defending — at home, at the border, and abroad.”

We’ll let people determine for themselves whether they think the ads promote all of the above or just the president. It should also be noted that a video can be propaganda without being a campaign ad.

In this case, the Democrats are not alone in their criticism of this campaign.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), a staunch supporter of the president, said on Sunday that no government official, including Trump “should spend public money on private ads for themselves.”

Appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation, the senator also said that “we ought to have a rule that no politician can have a building named after him while he’s alive,” which puts him at odds with a president who wants to put his name and face on everything.