Ads promoting President Trump and his policies continued to be paid for by the U.S.government well after Trump announced he would have his MAGA Inc.
super PAC take over funding the ads and kept airing despite a federal judge ordering them to come down.An NPR analysis of data from AdImpact finds that nearly $22 million in taxpayer dollars has been spent to air the ads since the campaign began in late September.Nearly $10 million of that total was spent after Oct.
5, when the president pledged to fund it privately in a post on Truth Social."The Radical Left is upset with the fact that I am taking Ads, which I consider to be a positive promotion for our Great U.S.A., and paying for them with U.S.A.money," Trump posted at the time.
"This is a rather standard thing to do but, rather than doing that, although nothing will make them happy, I have decided to do the Patriotic Ads, among others, and pay for them myself, and with money I raised for MAGA, Inc."The ads have been criticized by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle with Republicans praising the president's choice to shift funding for the ads to an outside super PAC.But, that praise was premature.
Despite giving the impression that there'd been a policy change, the government-funded ads didn't stop airing after Trump's post.The White House has repeatedly referred to the ads as public service announcements, but a lawsuit filed by Common Cause and others argued they were being funded without congressional approval and violated restrictions on publicity and propaganda produced with taxpayer dollars.The ads — five of them in all — cover a wide range of pro-Trump content.One includes a splashy montage of photos of the president with a chorus singing "love me" serving as the soundtrack.
Another is an exact duplicate of an ad made by the Trump campaign during the 2024 election cycle.Two promote the military operations in Venezuela and Iran.
All of them end with the words "Paid for by the U.S.Government" on the s...