Your Tax Dollars Just Paid For Trump’s Propaganda
Sources
Swenson, Ali. Taxpayers have funded nearly $1.5M in pro-Trump ads. Criticism is mounting, including from the GOP. AP News. September 28, 2026. https://apnews.com/article/trump-government-ads-taxpayer-funded-psa-propaganda-26ae03010d78221d1d93b06c0818d06d
Presidential Public Service Announcements Are Nothing New. The White House. September 25, 2026. https://www.whitehouse.gov/releases/2026/09/presidential-public-service-announcements-are-nothing-new/
VIDEO: America Will Never Be A Socialist/Communist Country. September 11, 2026. https://www.whitehouse.gov/videos/america-will-never-be-a-socialist-communist-country/
VIDEO: Final Battle ad campaign. https://platform.adimpact.com/viewer/13980fc0-e2cd-48b1-a86f-3789a1c03a89
VIDEO: Celebrating The Enduring Spirit Ad. https://host2.adimpact.com/admo/viewer/fc515b65-8eb4-4678-9297-306111a08507/
Viser, Matt. Trump’s Public Service Announcement: ‘Love Me’. The Atlantic. September 24, 2026. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/09/trump-ad-white-house-psa/688778/
Coster, Helen. Trump government ads draw scrutiny weeks before midterm elections. Reuters. September 28, 2026. https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/trump-government-ads-draw-scrutiny-weeks-before-midterm-elections-2026-09-28/
Mackey, Robert. White House claims pro-Trump ad it paid Fox to air was ‘public service announcement’. The Guardian. September 26, 2026. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/25/white-house-pro-trump-ad-fox
Goodwill, Bill. A Brief History of Public Service Advertising. PSA Research Center. Accessed September 29, 2026. https://www.psaresearch.com/a-brief-history-of-public-service-advertising/
Triumph of the Will (Nazi Propaganda, full film), https://archive.org/details/TriumphOfTheWillgermanTriumphDesWillens
Our History. Ad Council. Accessed September 29, 2026. https://www.adcouncil.org/about-us/our-history
Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003-Use of appropriated funds for flyer and print and television advertisements, B-302504, March 10, 2004. Government Accountability Office. https://www.gao.gov/products/b-302504
Transcript
Over the last week, the Trump administration has aired a series of 3 ads, paying a reported $1.5 MILLION US TAX DOLLARS to run ad spots across television, cable news, and streaming, and featuring inspirational sound bites and visuals aimed at… well. It’s hard to tell. But every ad confirms at the end that it was paid for by the United States Government. That’s right, surprise, we’ve all become the proud sponsors of whatever the fuck this all is. Ad spots touting Trump, his accomplishments, and how great America is under Trump, all just a few weeks out from a midterm election that will decide whether Trump continues to have complete control over every branch of government. Oh but, don’t worry, these aren’t campaign ads. That would be ridiculous, and illegal. No no, these are public service announcements, according to the official White House press release. Trump is performing a public service through these ads, so the fact that he used your tax dollars to do it is totally fine and actually incredibly normal and not weird of him at all. But really all you have to do is look at these ads to know these are not PSAs. So that’s what we’re going to do today. We’re gonna play a game called this or that. Is this Trump ad more like this PSA or that authoritarian propaganda. It’s actually a fun game that lawyers play all the time to determine whether something falls within the law or outside of the law. And don’t worry I’m throwing you a softball with today’s game. It’s really not that complicated. And that’s perhaps the most concerning thing of all, because the Trump regime knew exactly what they were doing, that it was beyond the pale, and they did it anyway, in an attempt to funnel taxpayer funds into maintaining Trump’s death grip on power. But I don’t need to tell you this, you can just see it for yourself.
AD
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Ok let’s watch this first ad, called Celebrating the Enduring Spirit. [insert clip]. This felt like a America 250 ad, like it should have been played on the 4th of July, not at the end of September, indicating to me the importance of timing here. They purposefully put this on the airwaves now, a few weeks out from midterms, not back in the summer when people would forget it by November. It shows a crowd, a few shots of Mount Rushmore, and footage of Trump speaking at the podium surrounded by American flags. He touts that we are the freest people on earth and the most exceptional nation ever, saying very specifically that liberty prevailed in the US because of the culture. There’s a dog whistle if I ever heard one. The culture. Not outsiders. You know he’s fucking grasping at straws here because if people are really free and successful you don’t really need to tell them that they’re the freest and most successful. You don’t need to do a song and dance like a paid ad spot worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to convince them they are so so free and so exceptional and special. There is also no call to action in this ad. There’s no useful information, there’s nothing saying go to this website or learn more information here or do anything. I didn’t learn anything from that ad in the way one would associate with a PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT. Is the announcement in the room with us? I’m a 90s kid, peak PSA era, I know one when I see one and that ain’t it.
Next ad is called “Final Battle.” It features a strangely low-quality video of Trump just walking down a hallway, lingering for a weird amount of time on the storage closet, and includes a soundclip of him once again promising liberty, but of course liberty that only he could provide. [insert clip]. Once again, I am given no call to action, no further information, I learned nothing from this ad, I wasn’t compelled to do anything. And in fact this is simply a re-use of an actual literal campaign ad from Trump’s 2024 campaign, with the call to action about voting for Trump removed at the end.
And the final ad I cannot show you with sound because it has a copyrighted song in the background. This copyright protection of course did not stop Trump from stealing the song, called Love Me by the artist JMSN, who did not give Trump permission to use it and who did not receive compensation for its use despite the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on the ad placement. This ad promises once again to get rid of communism and touts Trump’s so called accomplishments: biggest tax cut in history, reigniting American manufacturing, and defending law and order and police. All three of which are complete fabrications. Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill was the 6th largest tax cut in US history, didn’t even crack the top three. Manufacturing has seen modest gains in very specific sectors but overall growth has been stymied by increased oil prices and tariffs for which Trump is squarely to blame. And federal prosecutors are quitting in fucking droves because of the unethical shit Trump is asking them to do, let alone the blatantly illegal shit he has pulled since entering office making it clear he doesn’t actually care about law or order at all. And the fact that this ad features exclusively photos of Trump himself, followed by a sound bite of Dana White, the president of UFC, talking about how amazing Trump is as a person, all set to background music that repeats the words “love me” over and over again it’s actually too on the nose. Like they’re not even trying to make it seem like anything other than pro Trump propaganda, and they know they can just do a press release saying noooo it’s not propaganda….. And get away with it. Which is exactly what they did.
Their press release is titled “Presidential Public Service Announcements Are Nothing New.” Saying any phenomenon that people are up in arms about “nothing new” – oh actually this is nothing new – is a really handy tactic to make it seem like what you’re doing is fine or to get the upper hand in an argument–you may think this is a big deal and unprecedented but it’s actually nothing new. In fact the title of this Press Release is giving YouTube video title. Like leave it to the professionals, guys. In the press release, the White House claims that quote “the announcements are very clearly not campaign ads; President Trump is not on the ballot and there is no call to action.” Which, first of all, one of them quite literally was a campaign ad, second of all Trump has literally said to audiences “pretend I’m on the ballot in November” and third of all what’s the point of them then? The press release says they are “a reminder for Americans to love their country and know why it’s worth defending – at home, at the border, and abroad.” So I guess I’m supposed to feel more informed about why America is great and why I should defend it.
The release then points to how past presidents have also used PSAs so these ones by Trump should also be fine. Like just a bare bones read of this press release should make it easy enough to identify the differences between these Trump ads and past presidential PSAs. One of these things is not like the other. Trump ads say America is free as hell but also needs my protection from communists and marxists and stuff but this isn’t a campaign ad I’m just saying this stuff so you know about it. And they claim that is just like when the George W Bush administration ran a TV campaign explaining the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act to seniors, or Bush’s super bowl anti-drug and anti-terrorism ads. I actually found one of those ads, let’s watch it. [insert clip].
Or the press release mentions how the Obama administration used national advertising to promote Obamacare and open enrollment. I found one of those, too. Let’s watch. [insert clip]. Ok also in my research I stumbled across this Obama Buzzfeed collaboration from 2015 which I remember when it came out and represents truly peak cringe millennial hope core but at the time it was like omg I can’t believe they got Obama to be SO GOOFY. It’s actually unclear who paid for this video or if any money exchanged hands at all.
The press release also points to how Biden spent hundreds of millions of dollars to promote COVID vaccines. Let’s watch that one. [insert clip]
In all those examples, either the Department of Health and Human Services paid for the ads or the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign paid for that Bush era superbowl ad, which is a branch of the Office of National Drug Control Policy under the control of the White House. With these Trump ads, it just says “Paid for by the US Government.” It is unclear which agency or who actually paid the reported $1.5 million for the ad spots. Anyway, did you guess which one of these things is not like the other? If you guessed the Trump ads are not like any of the ads mentioned in the Trump press release defending the Trump ads, you’d be right!!! In all of the examples, there is no mention of how great America is or how great the president is, there is in fact no mention of the president at all, and each one of them provides a call to action–get vaccinated, don’t do drugs, go to healthcare dot gov, some larger takeaway aimed at promoting some public good. There is no takeaway from the Trump ads other than glorification of Trump and promotion of the greatness that is America but only in Trump’s hands. If America was great on its own, we wouldn’t need to Make America Great Again, after all. That sounds a hell of a lot more like a campaign ad than a public service announcement. What part of Trump’s ads are providing a public service? The ads instead seem a lot more like self-aggrandizement and puffery, if you ask me.
And what do you know, Trump’s own press release defending his actions cites to a decision from the Government Accountability Office that provides a lot of guidance as to why Trump’s ads actually are probably illegal. The decision is related to a Bush-era ad campaign promoting the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003. To promote the new law, the Bush administration used Congressionally appropriated funds, that is tax money that Congress set aside for an agency in his administration, specifically the Department of Health and Human Services, to produce TV commercials and other things as part of ad campaign touting the benefits of the program and providing further information about the program to seniors. The ads were controversial because they omitted some important information and misconstrued parts of the new law. Because of this, a group of Senators and Representatives got together and asked the Government Accountability Office to issue a decision as to whether the use of appropriated funds was illegal when used in this way.
The issue here is that a lot of appropriations bills have explicit language, written by Congress into the law, prohibiting the use of those funds for “publicity or propaganda.” When writing those laws, Congressmembers made clear they were concerned with differentiating between what is propaganda versus what is educational. They were also concerned with making sure funds couldn’t be used for the individual glorification of bureaucrats. However, the Government Accountability Office gives a lot of discretion to agencies to do with the funds what they will, so it will only override the decisions of agencies if their use of the funds to create ads is quote “so palpably erroneous as to be unreasonable.” Like this is so obviously propaganda and not informational that it is unreasonable there’s nothing that could justify it. And in the GAO opinion, again I found this opinion because the White House itself linked to this opinion in its press release attempting to argue that Trump’s ads AREN’T campaign ads, the GAO said quote “one of the main targets of the publicity or propaganda prohibition is one in which the obvious purpose is self-aggrandizement or puffery. We have defined self-aggrandizement as publicity of a nature tending to emphasize the importance of the agency or activity in question.” It goes on to say “The publicity or propaganda restriction also prohibits the use of appropriated funds solely for partisan purposes." "Appropriated funds may never be used "in a general propaganda effort designed to aid a political party or candidates." Okay so pointing to Trump’s own sources these ads clearly violate the law–they are an illegal use of taxpayer money. Meaning Trump literally robbed us, illegally, in order to make this horse shit. And I hope that examination of past presidential PSAs made that pretty obvious but just to DRIVE IT HOME I wanted to go ahead and take a peak at actual propaganda, used by actual dictators, to see how it compares. First, let’s go to what is perhaps the most classic and earliest example of video propaganda out there, the Triumph of the Will, a feature length Nazi propaganda film directed by Leni Riefenstahl, one of the most controversial and talented film directors in history. We watched this film in my intro to film class in college to give you an idea of its significance in the history of film. It came out in 1935, so relatively early in the Nazi regime, long before the beginning of World War II. And just in case you’re like come on Leeja this is ancient history Leni Riefenstahl died in 2003.
Anyway, let’s keep playing this or that, are these Trump ads more like this Nazi propaganda film or more like those other presidential PSAs I shared earlier. [insert clip.]
Ok or check out this recent campaign ad from former Hungarian dictator Viktor Orban–I apologize cuz there’s definitely some AI generated content in here, including these roughly translated captions from YouTube because I do not, in fact, speak Hungarian. [insert clip]
Remember I told you this one would be a soft ball, a real easy game of this or that. It’s almost as if he hired the same people to make his content as Viktor Orban did. At the very least they were clearly taking notes from each other.
Okay so are these Trump ads public service announcements or propaganda: campaign ads that misappropriated federal funds to buy ad spots? The answer is very obvious. However the outcome of this inquiry for now will be: nothing. In order for the Government Accountability Office to initiate an investigation and offer a legal opinion on this, they have to receive a request from Congress to do so. A Congress currently controlled by Republicans who would never stand up to Trump in that way but, even moreso, a Congress currently controlled by Republicans who theoretically stand to benefit from Trump ads that tout how well they’re doing ahead of midterm elections that they seem increasingly likely to lose. Accountability for this is never going to happen under the current Congress. And if Democrats take back control of one or both chambers of Congress after the election, I don’t think these ads will be at the top of their list of abuses they’d like to go ahead and start investigating. The list is long. Honestly at this point the hope of a nation rests on one person’s shoulders: JMSN, the artist whose song Trump stole who is the one person with direct enough grievances that he could actually recover some of those tax dollars for himself. Someone find that guy a lawyer.
However, there is precedent to believe that these ads may likely backfire on Republicans. Even though they aren’t campaign ads in a sense that they’re telling people who to vote for, they sure look and smell like campaign ads, and the takeaway is pretty clear–we’re supposed to feel like Trump and, by proxy, the Republicans, are doing a really great job making America super great again. The problem is that the vast majority of the country doesn’t actually believe that. Trump’s approval rating briefly dropped to a new low of 32% last week, with only 17% of people approving of his handling of the cost of living. And Republicans know that attaching themselves to a deeply unpopular president, putting that deeply unpopular president at the forefront leading up to midterm elections, historically has not served politicians well at all. With any luck, Trump’s attempt to center himself in the upcoming midterms will actually backfire, reminding people that the economy is in the shitter, gas is expensive as fuck, we’re in a war we don’t want to be in, and the entire world hates the US, and it’s directly because of him and the Republicans controlling Congress who have done nothing about any of it. With any luck, this combined with the price of gas needed to transport themselves to their nearest polling place will lead to a large number of Republican voters deciding to sit these midterms out. But that won’t undo the continued abuses of the system at the hands of a megalomaniac president who’s willing to do anything and break any law in the name of self-aggrandizement and puffery.
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Don’t miss my video from last week about Trump’s latest ban on the free press
