Trump’s Taxpayer Funded Propaganda Commercial

Sep 29, 2026 10:12 AM EDT, Tue

A former White House ethics lawyer under George W. Bush said the use of public money for the campaign ads could be “an impeachable offense.”

By Steve Benen

Sept. 28, 2026, 7:48 AM EDT

Federal laws related to taxpayer-funded electioneering do not offer much in the way of wiggle room. As The Washington Post reported, it is illegal under federal law to use public funds for “propaganda purposes,” and the Government Accountability Office has said the prohibition applies to communications that are “purely partisan” and/or “designed to aid a political party or candidates.”

With this in mind, Donald Trump and his team launched an unusually brazen gambit last week, using taxpayer money to air a 30-second ad, which looked like a campaign commercial because it was. The spot, launched as the early voting window started to open in earnest, was filled with images and video clips of Trump and his campaign slogans. It concluded with a Trump ally praising the president’s “toughness.”

The ad served no purpose other than to celebrate and glorify the president, who’s eager to run election-season ads intended to generate enthusiasm among core Republican voters.

The White House characterized the commercial as a “public service announcement,” which was every bit as ridiculous as it sounded.

What we didn’t know at the time was that the taxpayer-funded propaganda would be part of a series. As last week neared its end, the Republican administration released a second ad, also financed by the public, touting recent Trump speeches in which he heralded the national status quo as “the golden age of America.”

The third such ad, however, abandoned all pretenses.

As part of his 2024 presidential election campaign, Trump and his team aired an odd black-and-white ad featuring the candidate walking down a hallway in slow motion. The voice-over featured Trump vowing to, among other things, “demolish the deep state,” “expel the warmongers from our government” and “rout the fake news media.” At the time, it concluded with a message encouraging the public to back then-candidate Trump’s comeback bid.

Two years later, the administration has taken an effectively identical ad and started airing it during football games, except this time it ends with a different message: “Paid for by the U.S. government.”

In other words, the White House is using taxpayer money to recycle a 2024 campaign ad during the 2026 election season. Trump has a super PAC with hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank, but instead of using those considerable resources, he and his team apparently prefer to have you foot the bill for their election propaganda.

The “public service announcement” defense was clearly absurd, but it melted away entirely when the administration repurposed a literal campaign ad.

Norm Eisen, a former White House special counsel for ethics and government reform under Barack Obama, told The New York Times, “The president and his administration have gone from breaking the law to trampling it.”

The same article quoted Richard Painter, a former White House ethics lawyer under George W. Bush, saying that using federal funds for the ads might be an “abuse of power” and “an impeachable offense.” Painter added, “This is very dangerous. We do not allow government-sponsored propaganda in the United States.”

Trump and his team are no doubt aware of this. They have simply chosen not to care. Indeed, one of the most extraordinary elements of this controversy is the complete indifference to legal limits: White House officials know the law, but they also know Republicans are struggling in the midterms. So they’re taking a familiar step: ignore the law, prioritize the short-term goal and plan to deal with the consequences of their apparent illegalities later.

There’s no reason to assume the strategy will work — it’s arguably counterproductive for Republicans to have a wildly unpopular incumbent president putting the spotlight on himself as early voting begins in earnest — but the fact that it’s happening at all reflects a scandalous level of lawlessness in the West Wing.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

Related Posts

Navigation Within