{"id":225736,"date":"2026-09-27T15:23:46","date_gmt":"2026-09-27T15:23:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/white-house-claims-pro-trump-ad-it-paid-fox-to-air-was-public-service-announcement-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-09-27T15:23:46","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T15:23:46","slug":"white-house-claims-pro-trump-ad-it-paid-fox-to-air-was-public-service-announcement-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/white-house-claims-pro-trump-ad-it-paid-fox-to-air-was-public-service-announcement-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"White House claims pro-Trump ad it paid Fox to air was \u2018public service announcement\u2019 – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some Democrats say taxpayer-funded ad could be illegal government propaganda aimed at influencing voters
The White House on Friday defended its decision to use taxpayer funds to buy airtime on Fox News<\/a> for a White House-produced, pro-Trump ad that some Democrats said could be illegal government propaganda aimed at influencing voters in the upcoming midterm elections.
In a lengthy statement<\/a> sent to news outlets, the White House press office insisted that versions of the ad, which feature audio of Trump urging voters to help him \u201cdefeat communism\u201d and a whirlwind video review of his second term, were simply routine \u201cpublic service announcements\u201d like those produced by previous administrations.
However, while the Trump administration<\/a> ad features the president in almost <\/strong>every frame, and includes words of praise for him offered by a prominent supporter during the 2024 campaign, none of the advertising from three prior administrations the White House called similar featured any partisan messaging or showed images of Trump\u2019s predecessors.
By contrast, the 30-second version<\/a> of the pro-Trump ad broadcast on Fox News this week uses audio of Trump telling supporters<\/a> in Las Vegas last month: \u201cTogether we will defeat communism, socialism and Marxism in America,\u201d and a rapid-fire montage of images of Trump beneath the onscreen text: \u201cAmerica will never be a communist country,\u201d as a chorus sings the words \u201clove me\u201d, taken from a song of that name<\/a> by JMSN. In the original speech, Trump explicitly identified the enemy as \u201cDumocrat communists in Congress\u201d.
The last 10 seconds of the ad include text at the bottom the screen saying: \u201cPaid for by the US government.\u201d
The ad aired on Fox News this week as Trump hosted the leader of the world\u2019s largest communist nation, China, for a lavish state visit.
In its new statement, the White House insisted that versions of the ad celebrating Trump, which were also posted on official government accounts on TikTok<\/a> and YouTube<\/a> before airing on Fox, \u201care very clearly not campaign ads; President Trump is not on the ballot and there is no call to action. Instead, the announcements are a reminder for Americans to love their country and know why it\u2019s worth defending \u2013 at home, at the border, and abroad.\u201d
In fact, the version of the ad broadcast on Fox clearly includes partisan messaging that celebrates Trump\u2019s presidency and features his rhetoric comparing Democrats to communists in the run-up to congressional elections in which he recently urged supporters to \u201cpretend I\u2019m on the ballot\u201d and vote for his party.
Unlike the initial versions of the ad posted on social media, the broadcast version includes onscreen text boasting about what Trump calls his accomplishments. \u201cLargest tax cuts in history,\u201d one slogan reads. \u201cReigniting American manufacturing,\u201d says another. \u201cDefend law and order and police,\u201d comes next.
The broadcast version of the ad also closes with a tribute to Trump from Dana White, the Ultimate Fighting Championship chief executive, who can be heard saying: \u201cHe is the toughest, most resilient human being I have ever met in my life.\u201d White used that formulation to describe Trump multiple times during the 2024 presidential election campaign, most notably to sing Trump\u2019s praises at the Republican national convention<\/a>.
While the White House argues that the ad is an \u201cunapologetically American\u201d public service announcement \u201caimed at the country \u2013 not a line on the ballot\u201d, the actual images used are not of the grandeur of the country or its people, but just its current president.
In fact, slowing down the rapid-fire montage reveals that the flash-frame imagery in the ad is exclusively of Trump commanding the stage in a bizarre mix of moments during his second term, including: overseeing the US military raid on Venezuela; hosting a state dinner for Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman; accepting the Fifa peace prize; pardoning a turkey; announcing a new class of US navy ships to be named for himself; attending a Kennedy Center performance; awarding the Fifa Club World Cup trophy; showing Cristiano Ronaldo his presidential walk of fame; and addressing McDonald\u2019s owners.
The paid advertising by prior administrations which the Trump White House compared its ad to on Friday were uniformly non-partisan public information campaigns. A 2002 Super Bowl ad<\/a> from the White House office of national drug control policy, which connected drug use by young Americans to funding terrorist attacks, made no mention of political parties or then president George W Bush. A 2015 ad<\/a> showing people how much money they could save by signing up for health insurance at healthcare.gov did not show or mention Barack Obama. A 2021 ad<\/a> from the department of health and human services to promote the Covid-19 vaccine similarly made no mention of the president at the time, Joe Biden.
The White House defense of its ad comes after the representative Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and constitutional scholar, suggested on social media that the ad may violate federal laws including the Hatch Act.
\u201cThis may be felony criminal theft and conversion of government property for political campaign purposes,\u201d Raskin wrote<\/a>. \u201cIt is a Hatch Act violation for any government employees who worked on it or used government resources to make it. It is blatantly unethical under numerous federal ethics provisions proscribing the use of government resources for political campaigns.\u201d
AdImpact, a firm that tracks political ads, told the Wall Street Journal<\/a> that the pro-Trump ad aired on Fox News in New York City, Los Angeles, Miami and Washington DC, as well as on Newsmax in Chicago.
The administration has spent at least $443,000 so far to air that ad, according to the Associated Press.
AdImpact reported<\/a> on Friday that the White House also paid to broadcast a second ad<\/a> featuring Trump, with excerpts from his 3 July address at Mount Rushmore. The second ad, which aired on the rightwing network Newsmax on Friday, includes images of the president\u2019s supporters waving Trump flags and ends with the president repeating a slogan he has used dozens of times to describe his second administration: \u201cThis is only the beginning of the golden age of America.\u201d
JMSN, the Detroit-born artist who wrote and performs the song Love Me, wrote on social media<\/a> that it had been used \u201cillegally\u201d, because he was not approached by the White House for permission. \u201cI would never authorize my music to be used for ANY political agenda or campaign,\u201d the singer wrote. \u201cI am looking at lawyers handling this.\u201d<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some Democrats say taxpayer-funded ad could be illegal government propaganda aimed at influencing votersThe White House on Friday defended its decision to use taxpayer funds to buy airtime on Fox News for a White House-produced, pro-Trump ad that some Democrats said could be illegal government propaganda aimed at influencing voters in the upcoming midterm elections.In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":225737,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-225736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225736\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}