White House Defends $1.5M Taxpayer-Funded Pro-Trump Ads as Criticism Mounts

The White House is pushing back against mounting criticism of three taxpayer-funded advertisements that praise President Donald Trump, with public spending on the spots nearing at least $1.5 million.

White House communications director Steven Cheung dismissed the backlash in a post on X on Sunday, writing, "Don't let the Fake News get away with their lies about our epic Public Service Announcements that have been running on tv." The administration has characterized the ads as public service announcements similar to those used by past administrations.

But by Monday, criticism had intensified, including from within Trump's own party. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters, "It shouldn't be paid for with taxpayer dollars." Sen. Mike Rounds, also a South Dakota Republican, said, "It would not have been something that I would have done."

Legal experts consulted said the ads appear to violate federal statutes, including a law barring the use of congressionally appropriated funds for "publicity or propaganda" and another limiting the partisan political activities of government employees. They noted the ads differ from previous administrations' PSAs because they are not designed to help Americans access any specific program.

"You watch all three ads, they're sheer propaganda," said Richard Painter, a former White House ethics czar under Republican President George W. Bush. "This is increasingly looking like what authoritarian governments do to promote their leaders."

The scrutiny comes as the administration has increased spending on the ads and purchased airtime on popular programs, including college football and NFL broadcasts. It remains unclear which part of the government is funding the campaign.

With Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress, oversight would likely have to come from Trump's allies, reducing the likelihood of hearings or accountability efforts before November's midterm elections.

The first ad, which began airing last Wednesday, features clips of Trump discussing the defeat of communism, interspersed with onscreen text promoting the "largest tax cuts in history," "reigniting American manufacturing" and a call to "defend law and order and police." A second ad, launched later in the week, shows scenic nighttime footage of Mount Rushmore with quotes and clips from Trump's Fourth of July weekend speech there honoring the country's 250th anniversary. The latest spot, first aired over the weekend, is virtually identical to a 2024 Trump reelection campaign ad, showing him walking down a hallway as his voice warns of a "final battle" against "globalists" and "warmongers."

All three ads conclude with the message: "Paid for by the U.S. Government." The White House has not responded to inquiries about which part of the government is paying.

According to AdImpact, which tracks media spending, the spots have cost more than $1.4 million and have run across a wide range of TV networks nationwide. The actual amount could be significantly higher, depending on whether networks classified the ad as a political ad.

In defending the campaign, the White House published a list of PSAs from recent Democratic and Republican administrations, including Bush's Medicare law promotion, Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act subsidies and Joe Biden's COVID-19 vaccination ads. "The announcements are very clearly not campaign ads; President Trump is not on the ballot and there is no call to action," the White House wrote. "Instead, the announcements are a reminder for Americans to love their country and know why it's worth defending — at home, at the border, and abroad."

Kathleen Clark, a legal ethics professor at Washington University in St. Louis, disagreed, saying the new ads differ from the examples provided because they aren't 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 went out, said that campaign toed the line on appropriateness because it included misleading information about Medicare Part D, but he described Trump's campaign as a far more egregious violation of the statute blocking congressionally appropriated money from being spent on publicity or propaganda. "There's nothing in here about a particular policy that's at all focused," he said. "One of them is just about the evils of the deep state. Another one of them is about communists and Marxists."

The White House also referenced the administrations of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt, both of whom used posters, radio and film to rally the country during World Wars I and II. James Kimble, a communication professor at Seton Hall University who studies domestic propaganda, said it is true that Wilson's administration used propaganda to rally Americans, but most Americans no longer view its actions positively. "By almost any objective measure, looking back, we find what they did pretty repulsive," he said.

Top Democrats on the Senate and House appropriations committees last week wrote to the White House demanding the ads be taken down and requesting more information on how much money was spent to create and air them. Since then, more than a dozen Democrats and a handful of Republicans have spoken out against 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 be force-fed Trump's propaganda on their own dime," he said in a Senate floor speech Monday.

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said on CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday that no public official should spend public money on private ads for themselves. Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who lost his primary to a Trump-backed challenger, wrote on X on Monday: "Don't worry, using taxpayer dollars to run ominous campaign ads of the President has been done before and is completely legal… in banana republics."

The Republican chairs of the Senate and House appropriations committees did not respond to requests for comment.