The Trump administration released a new ad over the weekend as part of its “PSA” campaign, this time showing President Donald Trump walking down a hallway as he asks people to join him in his fight to “expel the warmongers from our government.”
The ad – which at the end states it was “paid for by the US government” – is almost identical to an ad run by Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.
Trump published this ad on Truth Social in January 2024. The repurposed ad now includes “Paid for by the U.S. Government.” But that excludes the final seconds of the 2024 ad, which ends with the text “Join President Trump’s fight to save America” and his 2024 campaign logo.
The ad signals an expansion of the White House’s controversial use of government funds to run stories that resemble campaign ads. Last week, the White House aired a television ad in which Trump described how he wanted to “defeat communism,” set to the song “Love Me” by JMSN. The White House called the ads “public service announcements.”
In the latest ad, a dramatic black-and-white video shows President Trump walking down a hallway with audio of him saying it’s the “final battle” and vowing to “tear down the deep state” and “get rid of the sick political class that hates our country.”
“We will rout the fake media and free America from these villains once and for all,” he concludes.
Federal law requires political advertisers to submit certain public information and generally prohibits the use of public funds for political advertising. Since the administration maintains that the ads are public service announcements, it is unclear whether this information is available. The White House did not disclose the specific source of government funding used to run the ads.
AdImpact, a political ad tracking company, estimated that the administration spent more than $1.7 million to run the ads, which have been widely shown in recent days during major television programs like football games, Sunday morning news shows and prime-time shows. That said, AdImpact does not have complete visibility into broadcasts on every cable channel in every market across the country, hampering this estimate.
The White House defended the ad Sunday, reminding NBC News of a statement it made last week when commenting on other ads released by the administration.
“These PSAs are intended to remind Americans to love their country and understand what is worth fighting for, at home, at our borders and abroad. The ad is educational and unapologetically patriotic. We should be proud of our country,” a White House spokesperson said.
Another White House official pushed back on questions: “The PSAs are clearly not political. The president is not on the ballot and the ads are not calling for action.”
The White House did not specifically respond to NBC News’ question that the ad was nearly identical to the Trump campaign’s 2024 ad.
A White House spokesperson also pointed to past examples of ads released by past administrations, including an ad by George W. Bush’s Department of Health and Human Services, a social media campaign by Barack Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency in 2014 and 2015, and an effort by Joe Biden’s administration encouraging Covid-19 vaccination.
The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office criticized both Bush’s and Obama’s ad campaigns — Bush’s for failing to properly disclose that the government was the source and Obama’s for violating “advertising, propaganda and anti-lobbying provisions.”
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung defended recent pro-Trump social media ads on Sunday, writing: “Don’t let fake news get away with their lies about our epic PSAs that aired on television.” »
CNN and The New York Times were the first to report that the ad was nearly identical to Trump’s 2024 campaign ad.
Spending taxpayer dollars on ads has raised legal and ethical concerns as well as condemnation from both parties.
“This is the kind of government propaganda you would expect in North Korea, not the United States of America, and it is a blatant and completely illegal abuse of America’s hard-earned tax dollars,” congressional Democrats wrote in a letter to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles on Friday.
The letter was signed by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.; Sen. Jack Reed, DR.I. ; Rep. Rosa De Lauro, D-Conn. ; and Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md.
Sen. John Kennedy, Republican of Los Angeles, said in a CBS interview Sunday that public officials should not “spend public money on private advertisements for themselves.”
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