The White House has spent days fiercely defending three of them Taxpayer funded advertising who glorify President Donald Trump and government spending of at least $1.5 million on what are known as public notices, as used in previous administrations.
“Don’t let the fakery happen News Get away with their lies about our epic public service announcements that were on TV,” White House Communications Director Steven Cheung wrote on X on Sunday.
But the Republican administration’s ads drew increasing criticism on Monday, including from members of Trump’s own party.
“It shouldn’t be paid for with taxpayer dollars,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters.
“That wouldn’t have been something I would have done. And I know the White House isn’t under the same guidelines that we are, but I wouldn’t have done that either,” said Sen. Mike Rounds, another Republican from South Dakota.
Several legal experts consulted by The Associated Press said the ads appeared to violate federal laws, including a law that prohibits the use of congressionally appropriated funds for “advertising or propaganda” and a law that restricts the partisan political activities of government employees.
They said the new commercials, which will air on network and cable television as well as streaming, differ from other administrations’ PSAs because they are not designed to make it easier for Americans to access any particular program.
“If you look at all three ads, they are pure propaganda,” said Richard Painter, a former White House ethics czar under Republican President George W. Bush. “This is increasingly similar to what authoritarian governments do to promote their leaders.”
The tightened control comes from the Trump administration increased expenses on advertising and bought time on popular television shows, including college football and National Football League programs. It remains unclear which part of the government is providing the funds.
Since both chambers of Congress are led by Republicans, control would likely have to come from Trump’s allies, reducing the likelihood of earlier hearings or other accountability efforts Midterm elections in November.
In less than a week, three ads were aired with a total value of well over $1 million
The campaign’s first commercial, which aired last Wednesday, features clips of Trump talking about defeating communism, interspersed with on-screen text touting the “largest tax cuts in history,” “revitalizing American manufacturing” and a call to “defend law, order and policing.”
A second ad ran later in the week, showing scenic videos of Mount Rushmore at night with quotes and excerpts from Trump’s Fourth of July weekend speech in honor of the country’s 250th anniversary.
The latest ad, which first aired over the weekend, is virtually identical to a commercial for Trump’s 2024 Republican re-election campaign. It shows him walking down a hallway as his voice warns of a “final battle” against “globalists” and “warmongers.”
All three ads end with the message: “Paid for by the U.S. Government.” The White House has not responded to questions about which part of the government is paying.
According to AdImpact, which tracks media spending, the spots have cost more than $1.4 million so far and have aired on a variety of television stations across the country. The actual amount spent could be significantly higher depending on whether the networks classified the ad as a political ad.
The ads are different from previous PSAs, experts say
In defense of the campaign, the White House released a list of PSAs from recent Democratic and Republican administrations.
Examples she cited included Bush’s Republican administration promoting a Medicare bill, Barack Obama’s Democratic administration promoting Affordable Care Act subsidies and Joe Biden’s Democratic administration running ads for COVID-19 vaccinations.
“The announcements are clearly not campaign advertising; President Trump is not on the ballot and there is no call to action,” the White House wrote. “Instead, the announcements remind Americans to love their country and know why it is worth defending – at home, at the border and abroad.”
Kathleen Clark, a professor of legal ethics at Washington University in St. Louis, said she believes the new ads differ from the White House examples because they are not aimed at helping the public benefit from specific government programs.
“These ads are nothing more than government propaganda aimed at helping Trump,” she said.
Painter, who joined the Bush administration after the Medicare PSAs expired, said the advertising campaign was inadequate in terms of adequacy because it contained misleading information about Medicare Part D. But he said Trump’s campaign was in a far more serious violation of the law that prevents funds appropriated by Congress from being spent on advertising or propaganda.
“There’s nothing here about any particular policy being targeted at all,” Painter said of Trump’s ads. “One of them is just about the evils of the deep state. Another is about communists and Marxists.”
In its support for the ads, the White House also pointed to the administrations of President Woodrow Wilson and President Franklin D. Roosevelt, both of whom used posters, radio and films to mobilize the country during World War I and World War II.
James Kimble, a communications professor at Seton Hall University who studies domestic propaganda, said it was true that Wilson’s Democratic administration used propaganda to rally Americans. But he said most Americans no longer view his actions favorably.
“Looking back, we find what they did, almost objectively speaking, pretty disgusting,” he said.
Skepticism about the campaign is growing on the Hill
Top Democrats on the Senate and House Budget Committees last week wrote to the White House They called for the ads to be removed and demanded more information about how much money was spent creating and airing the ads.
Since then, more than a dozen Democrats and a handful of Republicans have come forward to further criticize the ads. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the latest ad “an absolute violation of what a democracy is supposed to look like.”
“Americans sat down to watch football, not to have Trump’s propaganda imposed on them out of their own pockets,” he said in a speech on the Senate floor on Monday.
Sen. John Kennedy, a Republican from Louisiana, said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that no public official should spend public money on private advertising for themselves.
And Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who lost his primary to a Trump-backed challenger, offered his own harsh words for the administration on Monday.
“Don’t worry, using taxpayer money to run threatening presidential campaign ads has been done before and is completely legal…in banana republics,” he wrote in an X post.
The Republican chairmen of the Senate and House Appropriations Committees did not respond to requests for comment.