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To use a generous word, it’s audacious.
Over a song called “Love Me” (naturally, used without permission from the artist), the TV ad features Donald Trump vowing to “defeat communism, socialism, and Marxism in America” while quick cuts tout his supposed accomplishments, followed by UFC chief Dana White saying, “he’s the toughest, most resilient person that I’ve ever met, and nothing was going to stop him from fighting so hard for the country he loves!”
Then, with a flourish of trolling, the words “Paid for by the US Government” appear at the bottom of the screen. (Watch below.)
That ad, indeed paid for by tax dollars, was one in a series produced by the White House and aired across the country. They are unambiguously illegal — and that’s part of the point.
Again and again, this administration has broken the law not just to accomplish some immediate goal, but as an assertion of power, a dominance display, to say to everyone: Donald Trump does whatever he wants, and nobody can stop him.
The good news is that while the ads are meant to help Republicans stave off disaster in the midterm elections, they will likely do just the opposite. The bad news is that they further degrade the rule of law in America, making the task of imposing accountability all the more urgent.
A fascist aesthetic
The ads follow the now-familiar Trumpian aesthetic, toggling back and forth between high production values and low-budget slop, and treading right on the line that separates fascism from camp.
While the first ad with Dana White is all about Trump himself, the second one takes a bit of a detour to argue that God and Trump have together delivered America to heights never before seen in human history. Featuring footage from one of Trump’s trips to Mount Rushmore, it could have been directed by a modern-day Leni Riefenstahl.
“In all the chronicles of the ages, never before has any nation celebrated so magnificent a triumph as this one,” Trump says, over imagery meant to evoke vastness, distance, and power: helicopters flying over the mountain at sunset, an audience gazing up adoringly at him, enormous screens with his face on them, and then, shot from below, him pumping his fist before a final ejaculation of fireworks.
The last ad in the series repurposes one Trump used in the 2024 campaign, and may be the purest and most arresting of all:
In a time of voter unease and disgruntlement, political consultants advise their clients to communicate empathy and understanding, to show voters that the politician empathizes with their struggles and is working to improve their lives. But Trump will have none of that.
He is not here to help. He’s distant, angry, a figure of nothing but venom and vengeance. He walks toward the viewer like a serial killer stalking his prey, his face a mask of contempt and barely-contained rage. His visage in this ad is reminiscent of the glowering pictures erected on gigantic banners hanging from government buildings in DC, almost a parody of a dictator trying to inspire terror and subjugation (Trump likes that picture so much he made it his official portrait).
The words are just as horrifying.
“This is the final battle,” Trump says, and we know that final battles inevitably involve death and destruction even if they end in triumph.
“With you at my side,” he goes on as horror-movie music plays, “we will demolish the Deep State, we will expel the warmongers from our government, we will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the communists, marxists and fascists, we will throw off the sick political class that hates our country, we will rout the fake news media, and we will liberate America from these villains once and for all.”
Who thought this would be the right message to send, with voters fed up with high gas prices and yearning for an end to the idiotic war Trump started? The answer is unsurprising: Trump himself.
The president “has personally driven the controversial, taxpayer-funded video ads,” CNN reports, “including helping select the imagery and videos used.”
“Pretend I’m on the ballot”
Trump often claims that when he’s on the ballot, Republicans do much better than when he isn’t, and he’s not completely wrong (even if he lost the popular vote in two out of the three elections he has run in). There are at least some voters who turn out to vote for him but don’t get to the polls in midterm elections, and his strategy is to encourage those voters to mobilize.
“What I really want you to do is pretend, please, that I’m on the ballot,” he said at a recent rally. “Just come and vote. It’s so important.”
The trouble is that for every passive Trump fan who responds to this call, there may be many more voters who will hear that message and be more likely to vote for Democrats.
Right now, Trump is spectacularly unpopular; his approval ratings hover in the mid-30s, and he is under water on every policy issue. That’s especially true with the issue that tops voters’ agenda, the economy and prices. His ratings on the issue are abysmal in every poll; a recent one from Marquette University found his approval on inflation at a stunning 19 percent.
In the face of that kind of popular disgust, the president might employ any of a number of strategies. As The Atlantic reported last month, the path he chose “was to lean into the Democratic strategy of focusing on himself.” Hence the ads. And while they might have gone for a more empathetic message, they’re pure Trump: angry, self-aggrandizing to the point of absurdity, utterly unpersuasive, and strategically misconceived.
Democrats probably couldn’t be happier to see these ads aired as widely as possible.
This is all illegal
Trump could have paid for the ads with the gargantuan war chest his super PAC has amassed, helped by seven- and eight-figure contributions from corporations and ultra-wealthy individuals his administration has amply rewarded with government funds and policy changes.
Instead, the White House decided taxpayers should foot the bill.
The White House claims these are just “public service announcements,” comparing them to when previous presidents encouraged people to keep an eye out for terrorism or sign up for Medicare’s prescription drug program. The obvious difference is that there is no federal policy involved in Trump’s ads, which are just about how he’s great and his enemies must be destroyed.
Some Republicans are willing to acknowledge that the ads are a bad idea, even if they stop just short of acknowledging that what Trump is doing is illegal.
“It shouldn’t be paid for with taxpayer dollars,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune.
“I think there ought to be a rule that you can’t — well, there probably is a rule,” said Sen. John Kennedy on Face the Nation. “You can’t spend public money to promote yourself.”
In fact, the ads likely violate multiple provisions of the law. There’s the “publicity and propaganda” rider Congress has inserted into every appropriations bill for the last 75 years, forbidding money to be spent on just this kind of thing. There’s also the Hatch Act, which forbids federal employees from engaging in partisan political activity while on the job.
While the president and vice president are not covered by the Hatch Act, everyone else in the government is subject to its provisions — meaning anyone involved in the production and distribution of these ads could be subject to prosecution. That might be an unlikely outcome, since Hatch Act prosecutions are rare. But that fact in itself is a sign of how respect for the rule of law has been degraded under Trump.
Early in his first term, adviser Kellyanne Conway, warned that she was committing a Hatch Act violation by promoting Ivanka Trump merchandise on Fox News (which the Office of Special Counsel later found that she did repeatedly), replied contemptuously: “Let me know when the jail sentence starts.”
The message was clear: We work for Donald Trump, and that means we’re above the law. Trump later held his 2020 convention at the White House, a four-day-long Hatch Act violation no previous president would even have contemplated.
In the time since, the administration has deployed a particular strategy when it finds the law inconvenient: Break the law, then wait for someone to stop you. Shut down entire agencies, refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress, declare that you’ve changed the Constitution, ignore judicial orders, and even if the courts eventually order you to stop, by then you might have gotten the policy outcome you wanted.
That spirit of lawlessness has infected the federal government at all levels, and correcting it must be a key component of the rebuilding effort Democrats undertake the next time they control the government. The idea that the law is optional is a cancer Trump and his allies have injected into the government, and it must be excised.
Simply announcing that henceforth the law will be obeyed is not enough. There must be consequences for those who participated in the abuses of this administration, starting with exposure — including through extensive congressional investigations — extending to the immediate firing of anyone who is complicit and remains in their position after January 20, 2029, and extending to prosecutions where it’s necessary and appropriate.
“This is dumb, dumb, dumb beyond belief,” one former Trump campaign official told CNN in response to the ads the White House is now airing. “These guys are all gonna get subpoenaed. It’s gonna be bad.”
Clearly, however, Trump’s White House staff doesn’t think so. They seem to believe they have the same immunity the Supreme Court gave Trump himself in one of the most corrupt decisions in American history. But once they start getting hauled in front of the cameras — and perhaps some of them, hauled away in handcuffs — we can begin to restore some respect for the law.
That’s it for today
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Thanks for reading.
Filing suit against these law breakers would be a good start. I don't hold out for Trump being prosecuted and actually facing any meaningful penalties. It's possible, but kind of a long shot. Many of these people are young and have enriched themselves and I am sure will willingly pay attorneys to keep them in lawsuits for years. There's a cottage industry just waiting to happen. Let's see how serious the new Congress is. Assuming of course that they're allowed to be seated without a bloody battle.
Restoring respect for the law in government and political officials would be a very good thing. I wonder if a new Democratic government would make it a priority given the enormity of the repair job that will need to be done.
I do think it would be in order for all members of cabinet and executive staffers say "the corrupt and incompetent Trump administration (regime?)" whenever it is mentioned. Unlike the constant present smears about the Biden administration this has the ring of truth that would make it effective if said often enough.