Trump says Super Pac will pay for taxpayer-funded ads that sparked outcry | Donald Trump

Donald Trump said Monday he would fund taxpayer-funded pro-Trump ads “with money I raised for MAGA, Inc.,” a political action committee, after self-glorifying television ads sparked a backlash.

In a social media post, Trump called the ads, which cost at least $1.5 million in federal funds, “a positive promotion for our great United States” and called them “a pretty standard thing to do.”

Maga Inc is Trump’s political war chest, having amassed more than $400 million by the end of July. Trump began exploiting it to promote Republican candidates in the United States in the run-up to the midterm elections.

Trump provided no details on reimbursing taxpayers for ads already aired, or how he would go about getting his political organization to pay for such advertising.

The White House — which had fiercely defended the use of taxpayer dollars for spots to promote the president — said Monday night that Maga Inc would pay for such ads in the future. He did not answer questions about how he or Trump could prove his political funds were used for ads.

California Sen. Adam Schiff has called on the White House to prove that it has stopped using taxpayer money to fund its ads.

“Let’s see the proof that this illegal waste of your taxes is over for good. And that he pays the money back. We don’t want American taxpayers to be the last business owners to get stiffed,” Schiff said in a social media post.

Trump’s abrupt about-face came after leaders in both parties criticized the use of taxpayer money.

Last week, two congressional Democrats asked federal watchdogs to investigate whether the Trump administration illegally used taxpayer money to air the television spots that began airing in late September.

Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, and California Rep. George Whitesides wrote to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and Office of Special Counsel (OSC), calling the ads “desperate pre-election propaganda.”

Legal experts said the ads could even violate federal laws, including a law prohibiting the use of funds appropriated by Congress for “advertising or propaganda” and a law limiting partisan political activities by government employees.

The first ad featured clips of Trump speaking about the defeat of communism, interspersed with on-screen text promoting the “biggest tax cuts in history,” the “revival of American manufacturing” and a call to “defend law and order and the police.”

Later that same week, a second commercial began airing. It showed panoramic videos of Mount Rushmore with quotes and excerpts from Trump’s July 4 weekend speech honoring the country’s 250th anniversary.

A third, more recent one, was virtually identical to an ad for Trump’s 2024 Republican re-election campaign and showed him walking down a hallway as his voice is heard warning of a “final battle” against “globalists” and “warmongers.”

It all ended with a message: “Paid for by the American government.”

According to AdImpact, which tracks media spending, the spots had cost at least $1.4 million by the end of September. The actual amount spent could be much higher, depending on whether the networks classify the ad as a political ad.