Taxpayers Are Funding a Campaign-Style Ad for Trump — And the White House Won’t Say How Much It Costs

A pro-Trump television advertisement airing across the country ends with a line that has Washington buzzing: “Paid for by the U.S. Government.” The White House calls it a “public service announcement.” Ethics experts call it something else entirely.

WASHINGTON — If you were watching Fox News or Newsmax this month, you might have seen it: a polished, campaign-style ad featuring President Donald Trump, set to a choir singing “Love me… love me… love me,” with bold red text flashing his alleged accomplishments — “Largest tax cuts in history,” “Reigniting American manufacturing,” “Defend law and order and police.”

And at the bottom of the screen, in small letters: “Paid for by the U.S. Government” .

The ad is now airing in several major media markets, including during CBS’s “Face the Nation” and college football games . It has also appeared on Fox News and Newsmax in prime-time slots . The video first surfaced on the White House website and TikTok account in early September .

The White House insists it is not political.

A spokesperson told The Atlantic that the ad is a “public service announcement” that is “educational and unapologetically patriotic.” A second White House official said it is “clearly not political” .

But the ad’s content tells a different story. It opens with Trump declaring, “Together we will defeat communism, Marxism in America once and for all,” and closes with him saying, “America will never be a communist country” . The imagery is exclusively of Trump at White House events. The messaging is indistinguishable from a re-election campaign spot.

A $2.5 Million Question — With No Clear Answer

How much is this costing taxpayers? The White House won’t say.

AdImpact, a firm that tracks political advertising, estimates the government has spent at least $2.5 million airing these ads. The spots have run more than 2,000 times on broadcast networks and over 50 times on cable .

But the White House has refused to answer basic questions: How much money is being spent? Which government account is funding it? Who produced the spot?

“If the use of taxpayer dollars seems odd — and it should — the explanation that the White House gave me is even more bizarre,” wrote Matt Viser of The Atlantic .

The White House did offer a list of “supposedly comparable PSAs from past presidents”: George W. Bush’s anti-drug campaign, Joe Biden’s COVID vaccine push, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s World War II radio programs .

Critics say those comparisons fall flat. Past PSAs promoted specific government programs. This one promotes a person.

The Law: 75 Years of Prohibitions

For roughly 75 years, Congress has banned the use of federal appropriations for “unauthorized publicity or propaganda” inside the United States .

Section 718 of Division E of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026, spells out that ban explicitly — including money funneled through private contractors and ad agencies. The Government Accountability Office has long interpreted the ban to cover government messages that are “purely partisan or self-aggrandizing” — meaning messages built to help a party or candidate or to puff up an official .

“Government ads exist to tell you about a legitimate government program,” one analysis noted. “An ad designed to promote a political figure lands in exactly the territory GAO has flagged” .

The disclaimer “Paid for by the U.S. Government” settles the covert propaganda question, since GAO ties that category to hiding the government’s role. But the separate ban on partisan, self-promotional government advertising remains fully in force .

Daniel Weiner, a former campaign-finance official and senior director at the Brennan Center for Justice, called it “an astonishing misuse of public resources in the campaign context, one of the most blatant I’ve ever seen” .

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.) said on X that the ad may violate laws including the Hatch Act, which prohibits executive branch employees from using their jobs to promote political causes. “It is blatantly unethical under numerous federal ethics provisions proscribing the use of government resources for political campaigns,” Raskin wrote .

By law, presidents are exempt from the Hatch Act. But congressional appropriators often ban federal agencies from using funds to pay for propaganda — restrictions that are agency-specific, according to campaign-finance attorney Brett Kappel. The generic disclaimer obscures which agency might be responsible .

The Bipartisan Backlash

This is not a partisan complaint.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican, told reporters: “I like the message, but it shouldn’t be paid for by taxpayer dollars.”

Multiple Republican senators have reportedly expressed discomfort with the expenditure. With midterm elections just weeks away and Trump’s approval ratings languishing, the last thing Republican candidates need is a controversy over taxpayer-funded propaganda .

The irony is sharp: Republican advertisers have spent over $160 million** on television ads in September — but only **$1 million of that mentioned Trump by name. Meanwhile, Democratic advertisers spent nearly $23 million on ads mentioning Trump, roughly one-fifth of their budget .

In other words: Republicans are hiding from Trump in their own ads, while the White House is spending taxpayer money to put him on television.